i forgot about that one .I too have it blocked by Norton .Along with every preinstalled MS windows game ( they too call home when starting )

I meant that I don't plan to switch back to M$; I'm still going to develop and test in *nix, but since my original post I've considered the option of throwing M$ onto a computer I don't ever use so that I'll have the software as a reference.
ta0kira

Very interesting and enlightening points. I haven't used VS, though I did use VJ++ about 11 years ago. I've used several proprietary applications that obviously, from my perspective, were the result of slavery to automation because overt anomalies and bugs that seemed extremely simple to fix still existed several versions later. Though "extremely simple" to a *nix programmer is quite a bit different than to a M$ programmer.

Even the automation required by Qt has led me to forgo GUIs almost entirely and just add them as extensions to libraries that do all of the important stuff (ever try to give a QWidget an additional base class defined in a non-Qt file?) About the only code generators I use are Qt Designer and automake, and I can't say I like the word "integrated" in the acronym IDE, *nix or M$. I like my terminal and text editor.

The few things I can't stand in any development environment (i.e. I will stop using it immediately) are the inabilities to 1) disable automation, 2) override automation, 3) manually do what automation does. Another serious one is the inability to cancel a lengthy process. Though not always worth throwing software out the window for, I despise having to wait for a mistaken "refresh" or "rebuild" to complete when I know I'll have to change something and do the same thing again.
ta0kira

I'm surprised no one else has really addressed this, maybe because it's so obvious. In my opinion, as opinions are asked for, this is similar to the One Child per Laptop debacle whereby Microsoft seeks to lock in future computer users (or in this case programmers) by capturing them in school. It kind of reminds me of drug pushers. Here kid, try this software for free, you'll like it, no obligation, really.

Yeah, good point. I think jlinkels pretty much implied that. Honestly, if Windows didn't insist on being the only OS on a HD (in my experience) I might still have a Windows partition. I got tired of it saying "fatal install error: the install drive contains a non-Windows partition and must be repartitioned in order to continue" or installing Linux on FAT-32 only to have Windows screw up my Linux partition with it's "restore" crap. This doesn't need to degrade into a * vs. M thread, but I think issues with developing under M$ as a whole are worth addressing.
ta0kira

You should look at glade-3, with the new gtk builder interface. Glade-3 is a RAD tool that outputs the entire gtk GUI as xml, which is then read at run time and the GUI is automatically built by the builder that is now part of gtk. You are not precluded from adding your own stuff either.

I very quickly fell in love with it.

I have had a complete rewrite of a major project of mine pending for a couple of years now. I have been holding off waiting for my database vendor to come out with the promised next-generation product that would facilitate the job. They keep saying "real soon now" but it isn't here yet and I HAVE to move on this; my product is windows only, has issues in Vista that I cannot solve, has a major 16 bit component that I can't upgrade, and generally is getting past its sell-by date.

I had been hesitating because the GUI for this thing is simply huge. I have not counted for awhile, but the last time I did count, there were over 400 command buttons in it, over 500 text boxes, about 300 different dialogs, and all the support that goes with that, and I couldn't come up with a good, cross-platform way to do this without expending nightmarish amounts of effort just on a GUI which then would require a lot of work to move from platform to platform.

Then I found Glade-3. Played with it for one day. Now I have my cross-compiler environment up and running, and I am presently developing and putting in the can the functions I'll need throughout my program. When I have to tools done, then I'll use glade to generate a completely platform-agnostic GUI that will reside completely in text configuration files, then I'll build the rest of the system.

Glade-3, C++, SQL. Skinnable, modular, extensible, platform agnostic...very very cool . This'll fund my retirement. I'll also release pieces of it under the GPL. Mostly the requesters I am building, I think. I need a sophisticated set of requesters and others would benefit from them too.

Haha - another victim! The regeneration of code (and wiping your changes) was something which Symantec had in their C++ development system for Mac; it is definitely not an M$ invention (and I don't know if Symantec invented it either). The way you're meant to use such things is to use the autogenerated code as a template and instantiate procedures in your own files. Well, at least the Symantec IDE generated "abstract" code (C++) or just plain headers (C); I can't remember what the MSVC IDE does. Although I'd tell people to be familiar with M$ programming products, I personally never use any unless absolutely forced to in a project; I have been MS-free for 6 years and I've never missed the frustrations.

That sounds like a great tool. I tried installing it a few years back, but I think I got caught up in some sort of dependency hell and gave up. I'll try a little harder this time. Maybe I can find a package rather than messing with source. That's really the only thing I hate about GTK+. It's fine if you have a package, but upgrading manually is a waste of a week.
ta0kira

PS Unfortunately Slackware stopped supporting Gnome.

The company that sells the compiler, wants you, the future writer of future applications, to be proficient with their products. They will make their money off your future employers.

They're smart guys, they know how to make money. If they give you something, they make money doing it.