Does anyone program in C++ [Solved]

[AVLinux]

Meh,

You win some, you lose some...

I was very underwhelmed with zzzFM's GUI, it wasn't until I read the docs and made a few handy action scripts that it really made an impression. Anyway, each to their own and all that, best of luck on your ultimate FM journey!

[hasmak]

Meh,

You win some, you lose some...

I was very underwhelmed with zzzFM's GUI, it wasn't until I read the docs and made a few handy action scripts that it really made an impression. Anyway, each to their own and all that, best of luck on your ultimate FM journey!

Thanks for understanding
Part of my problems with file managers is ease of use, they should be intuitive; you have a task in mind, the way to do it should be clear and simple, you shouldn't have to think about workarounds or writing scripts or helper applications and plugins; to me this is a waste of time and energy; but that is just me, I am old, fussy, and cranky

[lars_the_bear]

...but I am saying that a developer with the right skills and attitude can make it so; Where to find that developer is the million dollar question

I guess you need to find a skilled X/Wayland/etc C++ developer who has a hankering to work on a old file manager

My gut feeling is that it would be harder to take over an old project, whose original maintainer has lost interest in it, than to start again from scratch. I fear that the people with the skills to do either, will have many other calls on their time.

Of all the things that you might develop for X or Wayland, a file manager is far from the hardest (I wrote one myself, about twenty years ago, for Angstrom Linux). A learning opportunity, maybe ?

BR, Lars.

[hasmak]

...but I am saying that a developer with the right skills and attitude can make it so; Where to find that developer is the million dollar question

I guess you need to find a skilled X/Wayland/etc C++ developer who has a hankering to work on a old file manager

My gut feeling is that it would be harder to take over an old project, whose original maintainer has lost interest in it, than to start again from scratch. I fear that the people with the skills to do either, will have many other calls on their time.

Of all the things that you might develop for X or Wayland, a file manager is far from the hardest (I wrote one myself, about twenty years ago, for Angstrom Linux). A learning opportunity, maybe ?

BR, Lars.

Thanks
I guess my only viable option is to start learning, and see where it goes
I heard about IDEs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... nvironment and was doing some reading, it seems quit a broad subject, perhaps if someone with more experience can guide me and direct me to where to start, something that is GUI driven for absolute dummies with drag and drop or flowchart and as little as possible CLI, I would be grateful
Thanks again

[lars_the_bear]

May I ask what programming experience you have? IDEs may take some of the drudgery out of coding, but they're a poor substitute for practical experience. If you're not all that familiar with programming, trying to write something for a Linux GUI probably isn't a great place to start. Not only have you got to get on top of the programming language, but you've got to learn the architecture of X/Wayland applications, and APIs for whatever libraries or frameworks you choose to use. You'll also have to master the platform-specific debugging methods that this kind of development requires.

Most Linux developers use GUI libraries like GTK or Qt to handle the low-level bits of the user interface. The good thing about using these libraries is that you can support both X and Wayland without a lot of additional work. The down-side, of course, is that they tend to be a bit chunky. XFE uses the FOX toolkit, which I would argue was a niche choice, even back when the project started. It's not something I'd recommend learning these days -- wxWidgets or FLTK probably have a bit more life in them, if you want something really light. Still, GTK and Qt probably account for 95% of all GUI applications on Linux (that's a wild guess, of course), which makes it relatively easy to find sample applications and documentation. And there are specialist forums for discussing these things. Thunar, I think, uses GTK. Using GTK effectively in C requires learning the (horrible) Glib object-orientated framework for C. Using GTK in C++ probably requires a specific C++ library like gtkmm. Not straightforward, but not a ghastly as Glib. When I last looked, Qt only programmed in C++, but it had a bunch of Qt-specific concepts and tooling that you wouldn't come across, unless you were specifically learning Qt.

I don't want to dampen anybody's enthusiasm, but I think you'd need a really solid grounding in at least one programming language, before even starting to tackle Linux GUI development. That means plodding through a college-level textbook, doing all the examples, perhaps with input from an instructor. Until AI comes along and takes all our jobs, I'm not sure there's any point skipping this step -- you'll only regret it later.

If you're already a skilled programmer, and just have to learn specific stuff about the Linux GUI, then that's a different matter.

BR, Lars.

[hasmak]

May I ask what programming experience you have? IDEs may take some of the drudgery out of coding, but they're a poor substitute for practical experience.

BR, Lars.

Experience = zero
I did some development of relational databases on MS Access but that was way back more than 20 years ago; So, practical experience on linux = zero
On the other hand, I like to tinker with stuff, so, I'll look at material online and see how it goes, what harm could I do?
Thanks again
All the best

[AVLinux]

Of all the things that you might develop for X or Wayland, a file manager is far from the hardest (I wrote one myself, about twenty years ago, for Angstrom Linux). A learning opportunity, maybe ?

BR, Lars.

Haha!

I have a friend who's an Industrial Electronics technician and he brought me an old embedded touchscreen unit used as a time clock interface for employees to punch in and out. He had repaired the touchscreen but somehow the OS on the units would no longer boot so it brought it to me since he's not acquainted with Linux... The OS was Angstrom Linux!!

I was very fortunate he had 2 units and I was able to DD the working OS from one to the other but that variant of Angstrom was based on some ancient Debian (Sarge or Woody maybe) that I couldn't really have done much with. Anyway they are still in service!

[DukeComposed]

Experience = zero
I did some development of relational databases on MS Access but that was way back more than 20 years ago; So, practical experience on linux = zero
On the other hand, I like to tinker with stuff, so, I'll look at material online and see how it goes, what harm could I do?

Computer programming is hard. Like, really hard. And some languages like C++ are unforgiving when it comes to mistakes both subtle and gross. Not to mention that if a major project has a list of dependencies, one would also have to learn those dependencies and the project build system to boot.

Never say never, and I'm sure recent advancements in AI can help, but asking "Does anyone know C++?" because you want to add some features to your favorite tool is a bit like asking "Is anyone a mechanic?" because you want to redesign your car. Worse, since this is an existing project with an active developer whose body of work you want to fork: because you want to redesign your neighbor's car.

[hasmak]

Never say never, and I'm sure recent advancements in AI can help, but asking "Does anyone know C++?" because you want to add some features to your favorite tool is a bit like asking "Is anyone a mechanic?" because you want to redesign your car. Worse, since this is an existing project with an active developer whose body of work you want to fork: because you want to redesign your neighbor's car.

That was derogatory and uncalled for

[DukeComposed]

That was derogatory and uncalled for

I strongly urge you to consider what you've asked and re-evaluate that statement. Best of luck to you in learning Linux software development.