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Is gui programming hard or am I just stupid?

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newbie1911

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
I'm trying to make something with wxwidgets right now and the learning curve just seems too steep. To get any understanding of what's going on I need to dig through header files. I tried C# wpf applications and visual c++ windows form applications and they seem even worse because I don't even know where the classes are coming from since there's no included files...

I heard it easy to make gui's with java but I really don't want to download a new ide and learn java right now.

So anyway is c++ gui programming actually hard or am I too big of a noob to get into gui's yet if they seem hard to me?
 
#3 ·
WPF or WinForms are the easiest desktop GUI platforms to learn IMO. Java's tricky until you get your IDE set up right. C++ GUI programming requires a good reference manual on a framework such as Win32, MFC, Qt, etc. and is generally harder to learn.

I'd recommend starting with WinForms and getting a good grasp on event-driven programming, then learn WPF because WinForms is somewhat outdated and WPF is close enough to Silverlight that you could jump into that framework quite easily.
 
Discussion starter · #4 ·
Damn my post didn't go through >.<.
So to make this short:
I learned c++ on my own and so far it seemed easy but now when I'm trying to learn gui programing it became cryptic. Wxwidgets lack good tutorials and windows form applications seem to be written in c++/cli which is not exactly the same as pure c++.
So in the end I'm not sure if it's because I'm inexperienced or if it's legitimately hard and not going to get better.
 
#5 ·
Yeah, hand-coding GUIs is like pulling your own teeth. But it's necessary, as users don't get on with the console. That's why some many business apps now "cheat" - use a javascript 'bridge', and post the output to a web page (albeit internal). You need to know about Apache or IIS, to get the data out there, but it's way quicker to develop (if a little more limited on what you can do)

I'm a Python programmer, C++ scares the hell out of me, so kudos for learning it on your own. But while I'm comfy with Python, using wxWidgets, or even the built-in Tkinter, seems so complex compared to everything I've encountered in Python. I don't know what it is, but it's the nature of the beast - printing graphics to a screen is complicated (hence GPUs!), thus the coding of them will reflect that. But it's just like driving - you're at a stage where you can drive an automatic, now you just gotta learn to drive stick-shift. Once you've got that sussed, it's easy and the world is your highway
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I'd say pick a toolkit, then google for tutorials, and read a lot. That's what I've done with Tkinter, and after some duds, found a couple of good pages I now regard as my bible. I'd have never cracked it without them (truth be told, whenever I'm coding GUIs, I've got them open, every time)
 
#6 ·
gui coding in c++ is a ballache.

Have you tried Qt? It's a pretty solid framework if rather big, but great for Gui apps. There's even a free IDE that you can download from their site.

Depending on what you want to do, and how complex it needs to be. C# with forms or even wpf is probably going to be the easiest.

What exactly are you trying to achieve?
 
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