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Why do you use U++? [message #29498]

Mon, 25 October 2010 05:02

gprentice
Messages: 260
Registered: November 2005
Location: New Zealand

Experienced Member

Why do you use U++? When people say U++ is fantastic or something, I cannot tell why they say that.

I'm thinking of writing a Windows only hobby program which might turn into more than that one day. A nice looking GUI matters to me and I want to avoid the .NET runtime. I don't want any multimedia stuff. I'm wondering why would I use U++ instead of say the free (or even non free) Visual Studio and I'm wondering why people here use U++ (leaving aside the learning curve issue). Is it because ...

1. It supports Linux.

2. You get all the source code and can rebuild and tweak/hack if you want, or fix problems.

3. There's fast response to bugs.

4. There's high quality help in the forum.

5. The reduction in source code size claimed by Mirek matters.

6. It has fast build times or fast development time (does it?)

7. It has a good library?

8. It's fun to use and you like playing with C++.

9. You don't mind the lack of comments in the source code because you don't need to change or understand the hard parts much.

Any other reasons?

Can I get nicer looking widgets/GUI in Visual Studio if I'm willing to pay for them?

I think Mirek has said it's easy to make your own widgets in U++. Is this true?

Thanks
Graeme

[Updated on: Mon, 25 October 2010 05:03]

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29500 is a reply to message #29498]

Mon, 25 October 2010 06:58

dolik.rce
Messages: 1791
Registered: August 2008
Location: Czech Republic

Ultimate Contributor

Hi Greame,

I agree on all of the reasons you stated plus following:

10. It is simple to create custom widgets (both from scratch and by inheritance or combination of existing ones).

11. Many in-built features in the library (documentation, skinning, translations, ...)

12. NTL is faster than STL on runtime

13. The "everything belongs somewhere" paradigm makes things much easier for programmer on all levels.

14. Great modularity thanks to packages (also possibility to switch between stable and development nests is a good thing).

Honza

[Updated on: Mon, 25 October 2010 06:58]

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29502 is a reply to message #29500]

Mon, 25 October 2010 08:31

koldo
Messages: 3432
Registered: August 2008

Senior Veteran

Fully agree Smile

Best regards
Iñaki

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29505 is a reply to message #29498]

Mon, 25 October 2010 09:46

mr_ped
Messages: 826
Registered: November 2005
Location: Czech Republic - Praha

Experienced Contributor

15. most of the library works as expected

While this may seem obvious, I very often hit this one, when I try some new library/framework. I simply check help, API, and then use it in some non-example way just to figure out it fails and then I have to submit bugs and wait for fixes. U++ is different, 99% of time the API does what it should, and the rest can be fixed thanks to sources. This makes "6." especially true (the development time).

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29508 is a reply to message #29505]

Mon, 25 October 2010 12:20

koldo
Messages: 3432
Registered: August 2008

Senior Veteran

Yes. As an extension of point 2, you can debug your program with the library so you really understand what happens inside every lib function.

Best regards
Iñaki

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29509 is a reply to message #29500]

Mon, 25 October 2010 12:43

frankdeprins
Messages: 99
Registered: September 2008
Location: Antwerp - Belgium

Member

The modularity is indeed great. The way you pull in packages in a project and can work on sources of these packages simultaneous with your project at hand is very handy. Basically, it boils down to a good build/dependency tracking system. But the way this is integrated in the IDE is very cleverly done.
Creating custom controls is also very easy indeed.
The code is not bloated and I'm always amazed that it just takes me a few minutes to download a new revision from subversion and build the IDE. Try that with Qt, which is also nice don't get me wrong, but building the libraries alone takes me more than an hour. And, so far, I've never managed to build Qt Creator myself.
With Ultimate, I even managed to run he IDE in debugging mode from within (another instance of) the IDE without a lot of sweat. This is very handy as a debugging tool, as well as a learning tool to see what happens.
Overall; one does not (easily) find all these advantages in other environments.
And it also looks good.
Can I give you my bank account nbr now? Smile

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #29510 is a reply to message #29509]

Mon, 25 October 2010 13:03

281264
Messages: 272
Registered: June 2010
Location: Spain

Experienced Member

To me:

How well NTL Works;
The possibility to debug NTL objects (for example in Eclipse with MinGW that is not possible);
Easiness in using features, such as threads, creation of custom objects;
The paradigm of objects in the stack rather than pointers to objects in the heap memory (so less garbage collection needed)
Robustness: Upp is a mature tool, very very stable and robust;
It is fast;
Bazaar tools (for instance, Docking is outstanding);
Splendid forum,
Etc�.

Cheers,

Javier.

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #30178 is a reply to message #29510]

Mon, 13 December 2010 19:40

kohait00
Messages: 939
Registered: July 2009
Location: Germany

Experienced Contributor

learning curve is not only a drawback IMO, what i like about Upp is to se a well structured code base, yet small and effective. i started as software developper but haven't had much experience after graduation in a lesser-related field. 'studying' upp code tought me how to come up with clean code.

another great benefit are the data structures. when in studies, a prof once told me, that programming is 90% dealing with data structuring, and it's crucial to select the proper data structures when modeling. upp is a great helper here.

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #34396 is a reply to message #29498]

Sun, 20 November 2011 11:35

lectus
Messages: 329
Registered: September 2006
Location: Brazil

Senior Member

As of today I only used it for small personal projects, but I'll give my opinion here.

I use it because:
* It supports Windows and Linux. I want my software to run at least on those systems. Mac would be great too.
* Free license that allows commercial use.
* Intuitive class library. Very often I try to do stuff without reading the manual and it works the first time I try, which means the library has good design.
* It has an IDE and UI layout creator. I don't want to do all my GUI by writing code. And the code completion helps a lot.
* Nice SQL integration.
* Nice complex controls (ArrayCtrl).
* It helps me avoid the bloat of VMs like .NET and Java, while maintaining (or even having better) productivity.
* Helpful community.

[Updated on: Sun, 20 November 2011 11:37]

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #34531 is a reply to message #34396]

Sun, 27 November 2011 20:51

BioBytes
Messages: 308
Registered: October 2008
Location: France

Senior Member

Hi alls,

Agree with Lectus, U++ has several in-built features that makes it a great IDE for C++ development:

- easy connection to databases,
- SQL macros making tables requests very convenient,
- reliable code as far as I could see until now,
- Very intuitive objects when the programmer becomes familiar with the IDE,
- More flexible than wxWidgets library though I like it for it covers a lot of C++ programming aspects Rolling Eyes

.

I moved from Delphi and to wxWidgets and then to U++ to develop applications faster and with more fexibility.

With no doubt U++ is one of the most interesting tool for development. Ultimate is a great work by the U++developpers team and thanks to them for bringing it to real world of programming.

Kind regards
Biobytes

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Re: Why do you use U++? [message #38567 is a reply to message #29498]

Mon, 24 December 2012 18:10

lectus
Messages: 329
Registered: September 2006
Location: Brazil

Senior Member

Here's another one:
Building U++ with a new compiler (VS2012) was quick and easy even if this compiler is not officially supported yet.

And I didn't even need to use the command line/configure/make. TheIde built U++ when I tried to build an application.

With other libraries it's not true.

[Updated on: Mon, 24 December 2012 18:10]

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