"Nah man, you should just install this terminal app and memorize 500 shortcuts to go back one directory"

  • StellarTabi [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I like the idea of contributing to a desktop GUI application, specifically in linux, but every single application is written in a completely random language/UI toolkit that would require several days, if not weeks, to grok enough codebase to actually identify where the change would go, assuming it didn't require re-adjusting every layer of the lasagna code. That's after learning the language.

    The application could be semantically written in the style of the 90s or the application is an electron app and therefor is shit+slow and it's not fixable all.

    Even if there's nothing wrong with the megablocks used to assemble the program, most GUI apps that are merely front-ends for a terminal application tend to break at random during beginner-level activities and require more terminal knowledge to fix/uncorrupt your data when something does go wrong than it would have taken to just learn the CLI in the first place.

    • StellarTabi [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      every single application is written in a completely random language/UI toolkit

      and none of them are written in good languages.

      • plinky [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        and none of them are written in good languages.

        every programmer thought before writing in random language :meow-floppy:

        • StellarTabi [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think we could actually be a decade away from "the end of history" on "good" programming languages, the rust revolution is leading the pack into the GUI app space.

          • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            As someone who likes Rust, the second Rust finally blows up and sees meaningful market share people are going to find ten billion things that sucks about it that will get fixed in some other iterative replacement language.

          • blobjim [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            There are no good programming languages. Maybe some day.

    • frankfurt_schoolgirl [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is very true, and probably the actual reason Linux apps are so weird. Until recently, the best option was probably GTK in C, which is somewhat horrific.

      There's some cool new developments with Rust and GTK, or Rust with the Iced library. It's being used by System76 for their new DE. Idk maybe Rust is a random language though.