April 27, 2020
Hi,

Background: I chose to rewrite a Python/PySide2/Qt application in X/GTK+. After much dithering I was pushed to Rust/gtk-rs/GTK+ and set to it. Then I decided to do D/GtkD/GTK+ as well.

Totally unscientific, biased, and indeed prejudiced result is that D is a nicer programming language to work with than Rust for doing GTK+ related UIs.

BUT…

Now I have to add the networking.

GTK+ (and therefore both gtk-rs and GtkD) has APIs for all the socket stuff so as to be harmonious with the Glib/GIO/GTK way of the world. The Big Question™ is how to add monitoring a read socket stream in the event loop.

Qt just does it automatically as far as I can tell, but GTK+ appears not to. Which is totally bizarre.

Rust now has async/await and futures such that you can create something to put on the GTK+ event loop very easily. It also has very nice tools for doing "reactive programming" using classic programming constructs that turn into event loop manangement with futures.

Does D have anything similar or has it missed the "programming with event loops" boat. Currently I am having a hard time finding ways of doing what is easy with Rust/gtk-rs/GTK+ using D/GtkD/GTK+ and this is rather frustrating given how much nicer D is for working with GTK+ than Rust is.


-- 
Russel.
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