Re: C++ & Lua for people like me?

[Matthias Kluwe <mkluwe@...>]

Hi!

2011/3/21 Patrick Mc(avery <spell_gooder_now@spellingbeewinnars.org>:
> Sorry for the flame war bait...... I need to make a decision and this list
> is an excellent resource.
>
> I know other list members are using Lua and C++ but nearly everyone else on
> this list, appear to be professional day-coders(and bright ones at that). I
> just program when I can.
>
> I have wanted to build a GUI app for some time and I have also been recently
> tempted by Pythons libraries. I know there are many GUI language bindings
> and GTK is C by default but it seems that C++ would open up lots of GUI
> doors(+ documentation) and other libraries doors too, it's just that C++
> scares the hell out of me.
>
> It seems that there are a lot of people calling it bloated and buggy and
> even professionals seem to stick to a subset because it's so big.

Well, I would consider statement "bloated and buggy" unprofessional.
And professionals may stay away from features as C style arrays or
multiple inheritance, but I won't call this a subset. These are more
like corner cases, but you won't notice their existance if you do not
use them.

Ok, here's my piece of advice:

If you want to learn C++ just for fun, do it. It's fun IMHO. Buy a
good introductory book that keeps you away from the unnecessary
things. I hear "Accelerated C++" recommended very often. Take a look
at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list
for more recommendations. Take your time. I would never call C++
bloated, but it is quite large, undeniably. So you won't get to your
GUI programming too quickly.

Finally, it's easily interfaced with Lua. It cannot get much easier, I presume.

If you just want to get a small GUI work done (not using Lua), I think
you're right to be tempted by Python. It's fun as well and support for
several toolkits available (perhaps not significantly less than you
could access via C or C++).

Regards,
Matthias