Modern GUI development

Question

Long long time ago was a Delphi, and any developer can rapidly build win32 GUI application. Delphi was a king (long life to king...) but now delphi and win32 has gone away.

So question is - what a preferred platform to rapidly build cross-platform GUI applications at present days? I'm have a good knowledge of Java and C#, and i'm looking for compare

• Java (Groovy) + SWT
• Java (Groovy) + Native GTK (cross-platform?)
• Java (Groovy) + QtJambi
• .NET/Mono + Gtk#
• .NET/Mono + WinForms 2.0 (very bad look&feel on linux)

Any real-world usages welcome.

Answer 1

I was asking this myself a year ago. Finally I went with Mono/GTK# and I'm very satisfied. Monodevelop feels like Delphi, following the "rapid application development" philosophy.

Mono runs on major platforms and GTK feels more or less native on them (as opposed to Java GUIs, they look ancient).

C# is also a major player on rapid development.

Another choice would be C++/QT. Google and many more big companies uses it on their products.

Answer 2

You're not limited to C#/Mono or Java... there's also Python/GTK:

http://www.pygtk.org/

Answer 3

Delphi is pretty much alive http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi, also if you like there is C++ Builder which is my personal favorite (if I where into C++). But if you want to try new RAD technologies I'll go with wxPython and SQLAlchemy.

Answer 4

As someone else said, Delphi is still alive and kicking. But standard Delphi is still just Win32, not really a cross-platform solution although a number of people use WINE successfully with Delphi apps. Embarcadero does have their relatively new .NET based ObjectPascal variant ("Delphi Prism"), though. Delphi Prism/.net/mono may be slightly better than c#/.net/mono for cross platform, but it's also more expensive and not from Microsoft.

Former Delphi users who want to do cross platform can use the mostly-Delphi-compatible FreePascal open source ObjectPascal compiler in its Lazarus IDE, which has become fairly solid and replicates most of Delph's IDE and the VCL. It compiles desktop apps to Windows, Linux, OSX, and other platforms, both 32 and 64 bit.

TO me it seems at least worthy of a look if you liked Delphi in the past: http://www.freepascal.org http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org

Answer 5

There a three Python-based projects that fit into the same space that Delphi was in.

Pythoncard, Dabo and Glom

In addition, consider building web applications that run locally and use a single-url browser such as Mozilla Prism or xulrunner to access it.

Answer 6

You can use GtkSharp on .NET Core, or you can use Avalonia on .NET Core. Avalonia is inspired by Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and uses XAML.

Personally, I prefer .NET Core over Java.

There is also the Glade user interface editor for designing GTK user interfaces in XML.

Qt is a cross-platform widget toolkit with bindings for many languages including Java and C#.

Answer 7

Delphi is pretty much alive and kicking (hard).

Want rapid GUI development? Then none can beat Delphi. The VCL library has over 500 visual components!
It provides ALL you need to build cross-platform GUI applications (targeted platforms: Windows 32/64, Linux, Android, OSX, iOS)

All this without those nasty:

   {IFDEF Linux} code      
    {IFDEF Windows} some_other_code  
      {IFDEF Mac} some_other_other_code  

Delphi also has Super-Duper Strings