Ask HN: For which language do you want a GUI builder ala Delphi / VB?

4 points by andsoitis ↗ HN

8 comments

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For javascript applications deployable to the browser.
All of them.
which do you have a preference for: immediate mode or retained mode?

what programming language would you want to see prioritized?

Rust, with immediate mode, with minimal build and runtime dependencies (no bloated stuff like Electron / GTK / Qt please).

A builder for egui[1] would be awesome.

[1] https://github.com/emilk/egui

The Slint rust framework has a vscode extension with a GUI builder.
I’d rather have a GUI builder ala Sun’s DevGuide. Unsure how Delphi/VB did it, but when I tried them back in the 90s they didn’t click. Nowadays, every UI builder seems significantly more complicated.

DevGuide completely separated the frontend from the backend, linked together by defining method names for events. When you compiled the backend, it would generate any changes from the frontend description — I don’t remember the file format but it was probably proprietary.

It was so easy I could do any non-graphics GUI w/ minimal effort. Sadly, it looks effectively absent from the internet.

Since you asked, I’d prefer Ruby, but if you delivered something like DevGuide I’d even learn Python.

Python, I think we need a better GUI builder that works with Tkinker.
IMHO, It looks quite good: https://pyuibuilder.pages.dev/

But Delphi/Lazarus is much more. It's component based programming with GUI as part of this ... component philosophy.