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Making GUIs, how do you pick? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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Sorry for the somewhat noob question, but how do you pick a library for making a GUI for your apps? My background is in physics, so most of my programming is perfectly find with a CLI that outputs a graph as a ps file or some csv. I am looking to learn about making some neat little GUIs. I was thinking it would be a good idea to try and build my GUI out of the browser so that my app can be as portable as possible, but does this mean it has to be in Javascript or can the backend be done in anything else?

I am not really sure what I am asking, but wanted to get a feel for how people approach front ends.

Thanks :)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Making a web app is a mistake 9 times out of 10, particularly when dealing with larger datasets. Because you're in physics, you probably want to skills you're learning to be transferable into physics and data science in general.

I recommend starting with python (if you know it already, awesome), then checking out pyqtgraph -- there's a bunch of demo apps that come with the package and you can use those as launch points. This will be your gateway into pyqt/pyside and legit desktop application development. Later, if you learn C++, you can transition into Qt (and still use all the power of the toolkit and the skills are transferable), or into raw C++ which is amazing for numerical computing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This. But it needs to be pointed out that your app may suffer from segmentation faults if you use C++. Rust is hard to work with as of right now. You should go with PyQt or Electron.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Electron for physics apps? Yuck! that's basically just web dev with local hosting. Like, try six million datapoints and plotting them in electron.