Are Professors stuck in a time warp?
One thing that I have noticed is how university professors seem to get stuck in time. I am taking a course on distributed systems and networks and have to create two applications using X Windows. No CORBA, no SOAP, no Java RMI, instead we have to use X Windows and Motif.
It should be interesting to create the application and to create a cool GUI application, but X Windows? Is this not a technology that came out 20 years ago?
clearly you dont know what you’re talking about…
What do you think linux uses, or solaris, or anything that is not windows, or even mac os X
This is true, so let me clarify what my complaint was. My main complaint was agaist using Motif, not necessarily X Windows. I realize that both Linux Unix still use X Windows. I guess I would prefer to be programming in GTK+ or QT instead of Motif, that is all.
Fuzzy,
I do think you have a valid complaint. As you’re about to find out, X-Windows (XLib) is very low level compared to other technologies. XWindows vs. Swing is like Assembly (or maybe C) vs. Java. It’s a mess to program in, and I hope the professors’ objective is to get you to appreciate programming at a higher level.
As for which widget set: Motif, GTK+, or QT, I don’t think that matters too much. That’s like choosing between C++, Java, and C#. Yes, there are pros and cons of each, but in the end, they’re all at the same level.
To be honest, I have no idea what the prof’s point is. His reason for not using Java or even C++ is that they all compiled down to C anyway, so why bother. Just cut out the middle man and program straight in C. This is a prof who quite proudly tells us about the terminal computer he uses in his office and the problem it has sometimes connecting to the terminal server.
Which is no where near as bad as the prof who showed me his new portable computer—circa 1988. According to this prof, the best operating systems were created in the late 80’s and nothing since measures up. And windows XP is not an operating system, it is just GUI sitting on top of DOS.
As for wanting to program in GTK+ or QT, the reason is simply that they can be made to look so much bettter then Motif. I have yet to see a nice looking GUI done in Motif.
I wouldn’t call X-lib ancient. With the except of GTK, QT programming is good cause it follows OOP paradigm. GTK is C and very ugly interms of doing gui developement. Unless you get into Gtk-mm, you have lots of options.
Perhaps its just an excersize in atleast doing some gui stuff in X. GUI developement isn’t necessairly fun regardless unless you have a nice rich IDE tool. Although Motif is pretty much dead dont discount these technologies they are still used in some applications that are meant to run on different *nix-es.
Anyway you’re proff sounds like a bit of a pureist - (old timers still using vi). I wouldn’t complain so much about the proff and perhaps try to see where he’s coming from. You’re there to learn anyways.
As far as the best OS’s go. I can’t argue there. BSD and other UNIX like operating systems today still hold true to being secure and reliable. OS X is built on FreeBSD and solaris is as well.
Perhaps your professor isn’t putting things in the right context.
Jo, you are probably right. And as I get more and more into the X Windows programming, it ain’t actually that bad. It is still ugly and not that much fun to do, but it is cool to be able to see the GUI part come together. I now have a nice little window with some buttons, a few labels, and a few text widgets on it. And a resource file that will be well over a 100 lines long by the time I am finished with it. But it ain’t that bad.
I think I may have complained a little to soon. However, I would still prefer to be doing web services or Java RMI for the distributed systems assignment instead of X Windows, but hey, students can’t be choicers.