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I am c# developer, in other words many projects that i have finished made by C#, fewer projects by Delphi and other by PHP and JAVA, now I must deliver solutions where the performance is crucial, I need to going to others technologies like UWP or MFC, but I think UWP is very limited, there are tonnes of constraints, other part MFC and visual c++ all knows is so hard to learn.
So which is the best(final) orientation to make a desktop business app?
There can only be subjective answers to this question. As a general rule you can get better performance by being "closer to the metal" so C++ is probably a better choice. Especially if you are impacted by some of the limitations of UWP.
That said, it's not all about the language you use. You can write slow programs in C++ and fast programs in C#/XAML.
UWP also encompasses distribution technologies and so you can distribute your C++ built app as an APPX by using the Desktop bridge.
Not sure where the performance critical part is:
Low memory and disk footprint? (below 400 KByte)
Can execute on cash-register running Win95?
Fast startup?
Fast 3D rendering?
Fast business logic calculations?
Great development tool support, that supports fast new development?
Works great on all versions of Windows or cross platform?
I'm guessing it is the business logic part, so I would probably implement the GUI in your favorite .NET GUI rendering tool. Then put any performance critical business logic in a standard C++ DLL you can interface from the .NET code.
Are there any platforms to build GUI platform without resorting to QT or .NET using native C++ ?
QT is cool, but take a lot of time to learn, in addition it has a lot of things I don't really need and really dislike QT IDE, compared to Visual Studio (I know you can use QT within Visual Studio)
.NET suffers same problem (I am actually learning C# and WPF right now, though it looks like WPF is somewhat easier to program and you can call native C++ code from WPF)
I am looking for something that is: relatively easy learn, does not have to have advanced features, works with C++11, support C++11 multi-threading, works with Visual Studio. Planning to build some applications for Numerical analysis.
There are lots of alternatives with varying levels of support in VS.
MFC has quite a bit of direct support in Visual Studio in the form of code generators, Wizards, etc. Unfortunately, the basic design is very old and hasn't aged very gracefully at all. Quite a few programmers not only would but do cite it as a prime example of a library that's better avoided if humanly possible.
WTL is Microsoft's other class library for producing Windows applications. It's a much newer design than MFC and generally considered much cleaner and nicer. As implied by the name, it's heavily template based, which helps it produce applications that are generally considerably smaller and faster than MFC ever attempted. For better or worse, Microsoft placed it under a fairly permissive open-source license some time ago, and updates since then have been quite minimal. Despite both being from Microsoft, Visual Studio has never done much to support WTL development.
wxWidgets started as more or less a clone of Microsoft's MFC, but has continued active development while MFC has mostly stagnated. It now has quite a few features (e.g., XML-based UI design, layout managers) far beyond anything MFC ever even considered including.
Ultimate++ is a fairly unusual toolkit that has mapped its own route (so to speak) that's quite a bit different from most others. They have their own IDE (TheIDE). Code can be quite simple and short, but is enough different from most typical C++ that many people find it difficult to grasp at first (and some experienced C++ programmers don't particularly like how some thing work).
GTK+/gtkmm is less of a Windows framework than a Linux framework that's portable enough to also work under Windows. It's probably not your best choice if you're developing exclusively (or even primarily) for Windows. These are also much more purely GUI frameworks than most others (i.e., they don't include things like collections, networking, cryptography, etc., that many others do include).
FLTK is another cross-platform toolkit. Its fairly small and fast, but somewhat like GTK+, it seems (at least to me) less like a Windows toolkit, than a Linux toolkit that happens to be portable enough that it can also work on Windows (but the results don't look or feel much like most Windows applications).
Juce was originally used to develop some music software (Traktion) so it includes a lot of music-oriented functionality. It also have some fairly unusual widgets that most others don't include (especially widgets that imitate controls you'd see on all sorts of audio equipment). Nonetheless, it has a solid core of basic GUI functionality, as well as the usual "extras" like network, crypto, XML and JSON, etc. Although I haven't tried to do anything like a full review of the code, it appears to be rather better written than most.
That's not a complete list by any means, but I think it hits most of the more popular/widely used GUI toolkits (other than Qt, of course).
Some time ago I asked myself exactly that same question.
I wrote my program using C++/CLI, which was not bad (my C++ code was very well isolated from the GUI/CLI part), but sharing the executable with others was a problem: it was the typical - it runs in my PC(...only). So, I needed a light alternative to the user unfriendly command line programs in scientific calculations, which I could easily share.
I am now happy to use Nana. Please join the group of users and / or developers of Nana and... have fun!
GUI with Nana C++ Library
Nana C++ Library takes aim at easy-to-use and portable library. It
provides a GUI framework and threads for easy programming with modern
C++ methods, such as traits, metaprogramming and other template
technologies.
Since you plan to develop exclusively for Windows, I think you should stay with MS provided GUI toolkits. While third party toolkits may provide the cross platform advantage you already said don't need, they add complication and dependencies.
Complication by for example when a new Visual Studio is released, then you have to wait for the toolkit to get that new VS supported, and dependencies, which means more dlls to be installed on the target system.
Plus some toolkits do not use the native look of the operating system, like many java programs for example.
I've been looking at a lot of different options for creating a GUI windows application. Win32, Windows forms, MFC to name a few. I know my C++ well, I just need some advice on where I should start learning some GUI for windows. Thanks!
Qt has helpful tutorials. Easy to learn. Open source. Many resources on the web!
MFC is quite a dated technology now; The kinds of books/tutorials available for it are similarly aging. QT is becoming far more widely used and is likely a much better starting point from a learning perspective.
There are of course plenty of other alternatives beyond C++; C# and .NET are good choices if you are specifically interested in development on Windows. C++ programmers tend to find their feet in C# quite quickly, although any new language/environment does of course have an extra learning curve
I would look into Qt, OpenGL and SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer).
Qt provides an easy way to build GUIs, I would (loosely) compare it to Java's Swing.
OpenGL and SDL are more about plain graphics, both being used in various games and applications.
I use MFC commercially and I'd have to say for strictly GUI/Windows apps, you might want to look at C# (either Winforms and/or WPF). MFC is getting pretty dated. You can get a lot more done in the same amount of time with C#. Sure it might run a tiny bit slower, but for UI apps, I think programmer time is much more important metric than execution time.
If you want to use C++ for UI, maybe have a look at Qt. It is continually updated/enhanced and is not limited to a single platform like MFC is.
Good luck!
It is as helpful to develop a windows based applications! their are many open sources and Ides to develop windows applications.
One of them are Visual Studios, it is an IDE ie..(Integrated Development Environment) developed by Microsoft for both windows and web based applications development.As it has an advantage that an individual should be proficient in any programming language that he/she knows about.This IDE is integrated with the .net framework which have the capability to manage the code and compile with the help of Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)and CLR common language at Run-time.The type checking is handled by Common type Specification for all Programming languages.JIT compiler is a compiler to execute to semi finished code and turns to code in to bytes.The main languages are handled by these IDE are C++,VC++,C#,Visual Basic,F#,J#..etc
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Closed 12 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Gui toolkits, which should I use?
I've got a fair bit of C/C++ experience - mostly for writing console application for Windows/Linux, and also a fair bit of C# experience - generally for writing WinForms applications etc.
I'm extremely impressed with with ease at which I can create a window in .net, for example something as simple as
Form form = new Form();
form.ShowDialog();
is enough to get a blank form up on the screen. In fact,
new Form().ShowDialog();
is technically enough as long as we don't mind losing reference to the form after it's closed.
I've tried writing some windows-based GUI stuff in C++ using windows.h, but not only does the learning curve seem a little steep but also the syntax is extremely verbose. Creating a simple window like the above mentioned single line .net implementation can easily exceed 2 dozen lines using windows.h.
But not only that, if I were to port the application over to Linux/Max (something which I can pretty much never do with .net, with the exception of hacks like mono etc), then I would need to rewrite 95% of the GUI code.
I'm assuming this is where frameworks come in, for example QT etc... (I don't really know much about gui frameworks, I'm afraid).
What GUI frameworks do you recommend? which are the most powerful and which are the easiest to use?
How do you generally tackle the task of coding your GUI in C/C++?
The closer to the metal (so to speak) that you are programming, the more difficult things get. WinForms (provided by the .NET Framework) is a pretty outstanding abstraction over the Win32 API, considering the complexity you've already seen that it involves for the even the simplest of tasks, like getting a window to appear on the screen. All of that is still happening in the background, of course (registering a window class, creating the window, etc.), you just don't have to write the code yourself.
It's interesting that you write off Mono as a "hack", but would consider a library like Qt. I'm really not sure on what basis you make the distinction. The Mono library is widely regarded as excellent when it comes to WinForms support. The biggest detractors are the same as Microsoft's own CLR implementation, namely that it doesn't produce truly native code, which is more irrelevant to performance in the majority of situations than one might think. Beyond that, some complain that Mono applications don't conform fully to the platform's UI guidelines (that is, they don't look and behave exactly like a native application would), but I have a similar complaint about applications written using Qt.
It seems like literally everyone recommends using Qt if you want to do GUI work in C++. As I mentioned above, it happens not to be my favorite library because I'm a stickler for using fully native controls and widgets provided by the platform you're currently running on. I understand that Qt has gotten a little better at this recently, but I still don't think it's up to my standards. If you're more flexible than I am (and I'll warn you that the average Mac user is not any more flexible than I am), and true platform independence is a big concern to you, it's probably the one you should opt for. Many people praise it for its design elegance and convenience, although I seriously doubt that even it offers the same simplicity as the .NET Framework's implementation.
If sheer simplicity and terseness of code is as important as the beginning of your question makes it sound, I highly recommend sticking with C# and WinForms. Things get harder as you start to remove layers of abstraction, and if you don't need the extra levels of control that doing so affords you, there's hardly any justification for making more work for yourself. Mono's Forms implementation is a perfectly viable solution for cross-platform applications, assuming your needs are relatively modest.
Beyond that, if you want to create a truly cross-platform application in C++ the right way, I recommend that you strictly separate your data layer code from your UI layer, and then write the UI using the tools provided by each platform you want to support. In Windows, your options are relatively open: .NET WinForms is a solid choice, native Win32 is a somewhat painful though merited option, and a handful of other libraries like MFC and WxWidgets can help to ease the pain of fully native programming (though not nearly as well as WinForms does). On the Mac, the only real option is Xcode, Interface Builder, and Objective-C, targeting the Cocoa framework. Linux/Unix-based systems are hardly my forte, but I'm given to understand that Qt is about as native a library as you can get. This sounds like more work than I think it is—a well-designed library should handle 80% of the work, leaving only around 20% that you have to do in implementing the UI. Beyond using truly native controls and widgets, I think the other big advantage afforded by this approach is flexibility. Notice how Microsoft Word looks very different (despite some superficial similarities) on Windows than it does on the Mac. And iTunes has become almost a paragon of excellent UI design on the Mac platform, but sticks out like a sore thumb on Windows. On the other hand, if you rolled out something like Windows Media Player on the Mac (and yes, it's been tried by Microsoft themselves, though without much success), Mac users will dismiss it as a complete abomination and probably be somewhat offended that you even tried. Not so good for the truly cross-platform-minded developer. All of that to say, if your app is anything but the simplest of utilities, you'll probably find that an entirely different interface is justified (and even expected) on each platform that you want to support.
No matter how great Qt may be, you're not going to get that with it.
Qt, hands down.
it's the most complete, most mature, fastest framework available. and on top of it, it's seriously multiplaftorm and your choice of commercially friendly open source or paid support.
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Will learning C++ help me build native applications with good speed? Will it help me as a programmer, and what are the other benefits?
The reason why I want to learn C++ is because I'm disappointed with the UI performances of applications built on top of JVM and .NET. They feel slow, and start slow too. Of course, a really bad programmer can create a slower and sluggish application using C++ too, but I'm not considering that case.
One of my favorite Windows utility application is Launchy. And in the Readme.pdf file, the author of the program wrote this:
0.6 This is the first C++ release. As I became frustrated with C#’s large
.NET framework requirements and users
lack of desire to install it, I
decided to switch back to the faster
language.
I totally agree with the author of Launchy about the .NET framework requirement or even a JRE requirement for desktop applications. Let alone the specific version of them. And some of the best and my favorite desktop applications don't need .NET or Java to run. They just run after installing. Are they mostly built using C++? Is C++ the only option for good and fast GUI based applications?
And, I'm also very interested in hearing the other benefits of learning C++.
yep, C++ is absolutely great. Check Qt. It has a great Python binding too, so you can easily prototype in Python, and when/if you need extra performance, porting to C++ is a mostly 1:1 translation.
But in fact, writing C++ isn't so hard either when you have a great platform, the worst part is writing all the class declarations :-)
If you want to build Windows applications that will run without frameworks such as .NET or virtual machines/interpreters, then your only really viable choices are going to be Visual Basic or C/C++
I've written some small Windows apps before in C++ code, and there is definitely a benefit in terms of speed and ease of deployment, at the expense of difficulty going up for development. C++ can be very fast, natively compiles, has many modern language features, and wide support. The trade off is that it's likely that you'll need to write more code in certain situations, or seek out libraries like Boost that provide the functionality you're after.
As a programmer, working in C++ and especially in C is good experience for helping you understand something just a tad closer to the machine than say, .NET, Java or a scripting language like VBScript, Python, Perl etc. It won't necessarily make you a better programmer, but if you are open to learning new lessons from it you may find that it helps you gain a new perspective on software. After all, most of the frameworks and systems you depend on are written in pure C, so it will never hurt you to understand the foundations. C++ is a different animal from straight C, but if you develop in C++ for Windows you'll likely find yourself working in a mix of C and C++ to work with Windows APIs, so it will have a trickle-down effect.
I wrote C++ windows apps for 10 years and switched to c# about 2 years ago to work on the latest product. I am embarrassed by how pathetic the C# app is. It takes 20 seconds to start up, you have to wait a second or so for it to switch between screens. I've used some third party GUI control library, and that leaks memory like a sieve! My app runs at 150 meg, and its doing hardly anything.
I am looking to go back to C++.
You can use MFC, it will be far quicker than .Net. Or, if you really want to burn, check out WTL - aLthough, there's not much documentation for that. I suggest you go with either MFC or Qt because you'll find plenty of good information and tutorials for them.
I can see that C# can be quicker to develop with, and maybe in some future version it will be quicker and smaller.
You will hate my answer:
The biggest bottlenecks in GUI development usually are not because of the language. After all most of the time in most applications the UI is idling, waiting for some user input. I can hear your screams already, but I said in most of the apps.
Let's put it this way: I am pretty sure that one can design a good UI on top of the .Net CLR. Learning C++ is a good thing, but will not solve the inherent problems of developing a good UI.
As always. It depends.
As long as you stay away from microsofts large Frameworks, as MFC, .net etc your applications can be blazing fast, but hard to code. Your benefit: You will really learn how windows is working behind its nice(?)surface. Just look into the initialisation code for COM-Objects and you know what I mean. You will never see such things in VB or C#
You have to program each button, each window and each control by yourself, sending silly window messages, however your applications are small, very small. This is an forgotten art:
Write small, fast programs
Good luck!
If you're committed to learning the raw, gritty details of Win32, then C++ will get you there. If you're not, then you'll end up using a bunch of wrappers anyway. For something like a small utility or especially something like a shell extension (where trying to use .NET will cause you problems anyway), C++ will let you write effective code with the absolute minimum in external dependencies. For a larger app, YMMV - a lot of the UI sluggishness out there comes from poor design: naive algorithms, an unwillingness to spin off non-trivial operations onto separate thread(s), reliance on badly-written 3rd-party components instead of custom controls... Mistakes easily made in any language.
Here is my honest answer to this.
First, I think every programmer should learn C/C++ just for the fact that by learning C++ you learn about programming. It is a systems-level language. You have to consider the finer details of memory management and so forth. I am shocked at how many programmers do not understand the foundational aspects of a programming language or computer system. By learning C/C++, you force yourself to understand programming at a more intimate level. On top of that, if you learn how to program in C/C++, you can program in almost anything.
That isn't to say C/C++ is always the right tool for the job. It can be a total pain to debug and take longer to write more meaningful code. However, it is perfect for those situations where you need absolute control of how a program executes.
This goes to say, I don't prefer C/C++ for UI programming. You still have to use a windowing framework specific to the OS you run on (MFC,Win32,Motif,GTK,QT,etc.). These frameworks don't lend themselves to easy learning curves. For at least Windows development, .NET is really the future of UI development (even though surprisingly MFC got a major overhaul for Vista that does stuff .NET doesn't even do yet). If you write your UI in .NET, it is easier to maintain and for others to maintain.
I typically write my UI in .NET and backend in C++.
Yes and no. It's all about optimization...And since C++ allows you to work on a lower level C++ is one of the best languages to write fast applications.
However those low-level mechanics implemented in C++ could be very annoying if you're used to more abstract approaches to OOP.
Testing your software in C++ is usually a long process.
If you are looking for speed anyway, C++ would definitely be one of the best choices.
C++ will indeed potentially get you a leaner, meaner and faster application (if you do it right).
However, the .NET framework is built for comfort from a developer point of view; a vast improvement over Win32 API or MFC, which may seem like hard work in comparison, So consider how you will implement the aspects for which your application depends on .NET (there are other frameworks available that may be easier than MFC or Win32 API), and also consider the costs and license issues of using such frameworks; for example the free VC++ Express Edition for example does not include MFC support.
If you know where you application is sluggish, C++/CLI may be a solution; allowing you to mix managed and native code to accelerate the parts that need it. However if it is the GUI that is intrinsically slow rather than the application processing; this may not be a useful path.