Jim's Blog

GUI toolkit is one of the first decisions

It's weird. My blocking point for learning new stuff seems to be that I don't know how to learn to start.

I want to do some small home projects, and I think that these would be useful to other people. But I can't provide an app that would be "okay, now go out and install library x, open a command prompt... oh, make sure you are using OS [fill in name here] version y". So I figure that I need a cross platform GUI toolkit for stand alone projects. If they contact a service, it probably won't be any server that I am running so trying to make it as a webapp would be pretty pointless - and difficult.

At first I look for something for Ruby. All signs seem to point to shoes, which has been difficult to read about after the lead developer committed virtual suicide. I need to look into it more, but when the creator disappears, I wonder if the people left can keep the flame going.

Then I looked at eclipse RCP since I know the java community and I figure that I could make good progress in it. But then my body sighs - it would seem too much like work. The point of doing a home project would be to learn new things as well as scratch my itch.

Any MS specific solution is pretty much a no-go since I'd like to support my current OS. As for python, I don't even know where to start there either. We'll see how long my patience is for this type of work.