From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2000-12-22T05:49:54+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7912] Re: GUIs for Rubies

"Conrad Schneiker" <schneik@us.ibm.com> writes:

> Let me more or less repeat my earlier question, this time to Dave 
> (Thomas): what was your reason for telling the XP folks that Ruby 
> (presumably with Tk) was not up to snuff for heavy GUI lifting? 
> Performance? Missing many now-common-elsewhere widgets? Or ...?

Because GUI work implies stuff in the client domain. For developers,
they'll be comparing Ruby to drag-n-drop code builders (Visual Age,
JBuilder, etc). They'll be look for business objects, tables that link 
automatically to database queries, and so on and so on. 

You _could_ craft a client application in Ruby today, but you'd be
doing it without much environmental support, and with no convenient
end-user deployment mechanism.

Clearly you can do serious work with Tk: SourceNavigator looks great
and is a Tk application. but it ain't easy, and I think we'd get
ridiculed if we help Ruby up as a client-side application builder to
the average Java or VB programmer.

For now, those who are happy working at the API layers know the truth, 
and they'll be building killer apps using Ruby. Then, when we're
ready...


Dave