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Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

I'm really sorry for that guy.

Now that he knows for a fact that GUIs can be fast, he'll be suffering for the rest of his life when a GUI app is slow for any reason.

I'm only 50% joking here.

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Lay tile just once and you'll spend the rest of your life seeing every fault in every tile job ever.

Drywall, too.

And roofing.

or bending and installing conduit

or painting

or cutting grass. my god. give me the tools and i'll give you a putting green fit for the pga

is this after you rip out the grass that is already there and then replace it with a grass that is amneable to to a putting green? because if you can make my St. Augustine grass a putting green, then you sir, are a god.

I can probably get it pretty playable and fast over the course of a season or two of working it shorter and shorter and rolling the playing surface smooth. At least municipal golf course tier.

Also true for terminating a panel, punchdown, keystone, lacing, etc.

Some defects can be tolerated and DIY’d away, but roofing, plumbing and foundations are something you really don’t want to discover later.

True. Source: My own experience.

This is why my wife hates house hunting with me. I see all the flaws.

O wow, this is so true. Eating sausage and knowing how it's made are just very different things. And you can't quite go back to the former after having seen/done the former.

I am assuming, based on the old saying, you are recommending NOT seeing how the sausage gets made?

Well, let me just say that they'll never taste quite the same. Obviously you'll need to renovate parts of your house over time, but as I summarize it to my friends, I care most about the parts of the renovation I you won't be able to see. How is the paint job behind the wall-mounted heater? Did they clear up rubble in that space under you kitchen? Did they tile over your old tiles (usually easy to see) and do you now have small spaces between the tiles where water can collect over time?

Yep. Do it right once, or see it done right, and you'll never be the same. We need more people getting down to the fundamentals like this to keep everyone honest.

(Consider the Rick and Morty "true level" bit... and realize it's not that much of an exaggeration when it comes to stuff like this...)

Thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. Rick and Morty funny as usual.

For others interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1zBtJhgwBI

(OP here) The suffering hasn't increased that much. It was all painful before.

Glad to hear that, I guess :)

> Now that he knows for a fact that GUIs can be fast, he'll be suffering for the rest of his life when a GUI app is slow for any reason.

Not only slow GUIs but GUIs that demand tens or hundreds of MBs just to draw a few items

GUI libraries are heavyweight for a reason: lightweight GUIs do not adequately address accessibility, or internationalization.

If you were on my software project, and you weren't using native controls on macOS or Windows, one of the big two on Linux, or Electron, you'd better have a damn good reason.

Humm, what about Qt ? Or video games ?

Qt uses native controls on Windows or Mac. Not ideally, but it's a viable solution. And it's one of Linux's big two.

Video games count as a damn good reason.

Qt doesn't use native controls, they're lookalike.

The point of the comment asking about Qt is most likely that Qt is not heavyweight (it does a great job even on embedded.), therefore pointing out that there is a difference between Qt and the other you mentioned.

I'm not a fan of OOP and I think there are more interesting framework model - but Qt is definitely the best and most efficient GUI framework I've had the pleasure to work with.

This isn't necessarily true; FreePascal's LCL integrates with native accessibility frameworks:

> The LCL should automatically provide accessibility for all of its standard controls, or allow the underlying widgetset to provide its own accessibility for the controls utilized directly from the widgetset.

https://wiki.freepascal.org/LCL_Accessibility

Accessibility and internationalization are both very important, but I think it's possible to have both without bringing in an entire browser engine.

> GUI libraries are heavyweight for a reason: lightweight GUIs do not adequately address accessibility, or internationalization.

GUIs don't need to be heavyweight to be accessible or internationalized (excepting for text translations, which should be downloaded rather than installed)

Why should text translations be downloaded rather than installed? Oh, you mean not included by default in the installer? I'm not sure why that's very material here.

I suspect the parent isn't talking about theoretical implementations but choosing an existing GUI framework for a project.

I don't know much about GUIs but lightweight tools often fail to take accessibility into account, and hand-rolled tools almost always do.

Win32 has accessibility and localization both, yet pure Win32 API programming results in tiny binaries that use a negligible amount of RAM compared to modern frameworks.

I work with people to make great UXes. And now I live my life seeing horrible UXes everywhere and hating having to use them.

Color balance in photographs.

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