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by cabalamat 1746 days ago
You have to define the behavour of your UI elements as well as their placement, at which point you're writing a program.

The best language to write a program in is a Turing-complete programming language specially designed for that task, not some cobbled together UI-definition language with ad hoc add-ons to processing.
4 comments
drran 1746 days ago
HTML is the only successful really cross-platform GUI system (text console, text-to-speak, Win, Mac, Lin, Android, iOS, Symbian, embedded, etc.) created so far.
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jonny_eh 1746 days ago
Indeed. Whenever someone suggests some kind of "UI" language, I just point to HTML/CSS. It's by no means perfect, but it's good enough and as ubiquitous as anything ever.
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_jal 1746 days ago
The best clothes are hand-tailored specifically to fit your body.

And yet, most people wear mass-produced clothes.

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NegativeLatency 1746 days ago
Well yes but to continue the metaphor almost nobody wears barrels
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HWR_14 1746 days ago
Mass produced clothes are significantly cheaper than barrels. Several orders of magnitude.
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goldenkey 1745 days ago
You have now been subscribed to Barrel Facts. Whiskey barrels are really expensive and the method to make certain types is passed down through generations. The tightness of the barrel and the type of wood are both considered as the wood will expand a bit from absorption of its contents. An amount of whiskey loss is accepted from evaporation of the contents through the porous wood of the barrel. A considerable expertise is necessary to create quality barrels. [1][2][3]

Each type of wood is used for aging different spirits. Oak is most common in whiskey and wine making. Sometimes the barrels are even smoked near a fire to impart a unique flavor into the alcohol that will be held in the barrel. A used barrel is very desirable and can go for higher prices on the open market than even a quality new barrel. This price parity is due to the unique flavor that can be impacted by using a used wine barrel for whiskey, used whiskey barrel for wine, or some other unique alternation of barrel contents.

Barrels that are hundreds of years old, and thick with aged bacteria are used for making traditional Japanese soy sauce. These special family heirloom barrels will be used for many generations before they are eventually retired. [4]

[1] https://youtu.be/ccoHCSKMf-E

[2] https://youtu.be/GE7QA1chUzw

[3] https://youtu.be/kaXvFw8ve_I

[4] https://youtu.be/1mc2g8Ue-hI

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flixic 1746 days ago
The way I look at this, the UI would be only to speed things up / simplify things a little bit. It wouldn't try to do full error validation before execution. It's the job of a command-line app to fail with an error if wrong combination of flags or inputs was provided, and the UI might display that error in a pretty generic way.
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hungryforcodes 1746 days ago
Everyone has different requirements. For many things, I'd take a quick JSON file configuration over having to write everything from scratch again and reinventing the wheel.

Like it or not, the whole low code movement is about this.

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cabalamat 1746 days ago
> I'd take a quick JSON file configuration

Let's say your GUI has several input boxes. You want to validate those boxes. You need something Turing-complete to do this, because if it isn't Turing complete and the tool is used by lots of people, someone's GUI will require it.

> the whole low code movement is about this

That's OK provided you accept that it limits what can be done.

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