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Re: Which is the biggest drawback of U++ "unpopuliarity"? [message #7376 is a reply to message #307]

Mon, 25 December 2006 04:12

agent86
Messages: 11
Registered: December 2006
Location: San Francisco

Promising Member

I just got to using U++ a week ago. My first impression was that it was strange. I was a stranger in a strange land. The very first screen asked me about copying some items to my local directory. I had no idea how to answer that. The next screen was equally unfamiliar. I needed to pick something called an assembly or a package or something. Whatever they are...

I was expecting a 3-piece window with a welcome screen etc. I didn't get the comformtable feeling of VC++ or eclipse or MinGWStudio or Code::Blocks or wxHatch or Anjuta or DevC++ or Kdevelop or....

U++ and TheIDE was strange. I had to expend a fair amount of energy to investigate. I had to investigat to see if I wanted to learn more. If MinGWStudio were not dead (dying?), I might have just stuck with that. I believe that the work I have done with U++ and TheIDE has been and will be very beneficial.

Forgive the military analogy, but I feel that with the other IDSs I was flying biplanes in the 1920s. After a week with TheIDE I feel like someone sat me in the cockpit of a supersonic fighter/bomber. I am in an unknown and maybe a little scary environment but have more weapons at my disposal than I can begin to appreciate at my current learning level. Slightly overwhelmed...

So I needed to get past the "What the heck is a package and a nest and an assembly and why doesn't U++ talk about projects?" stage. I'm doing ok so far.

So the short answer is that the immediate impression of U++ is that it is "very different". There is a learning curve just to see what it does.

As for the look and feel of the widgets, they seem great to me. I don't want much more than they look reasonable and work the way one would expect. Users should not be supprised about how they work. (EG. in Java Swing, if you tab across a dialog box and highlight the desired button and hit Return, you don't get the selected button action. You get the default button. Space bar gets the highlighted button. Not intuitive. I hate it.)

Anyway, I develop on both Linux and Windows. I like that my apps can be based on the same code set. I have been using wxWidgets and am ready to switch, but I am not sure yet...cause I need to read some documentation. Maybe I haven't found it yet, but a simple overview of the widgets and how they fit together would help. What constitutes an application, the typical flow, etc.

Thanks for reading, Sometimes I get carried away.

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