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As far as I know WPF is the only good and easy UI toolkit! 
Arguably UWP (available in C++) / Xamarin should be close behind...
Some people think it is HTML.. mmm... debatable...
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I tried WPF yesterday. I got as far as the designer before I wished it was a physical thing so I could crumple it up and throw it in the trash.
Whomever created WPF should be dragged into the street and shot.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Seriously I don't quite understand the anti-WPF crowd.
To be fair, if I reminisce back to 2005, I think I did find it kind of over complicated and bloated at the time...
But since then I came to love it far above all other GUI toolkit.
I suspect most WPF tutorial and introduction are totally lost in power user considerations.... WPF is best by far. And by best I do mean it's also the simplest, believe it or not! 
I tried to write the introduction than it deserve once... (and unexpectedly won an award for it), have a look! 
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The first thing is, I don't like the designer.
The second thing is, the first time i tried to include a 3rd party component it flat out didn't work, - did not show up and no error message - despite following all the instructions.
The final thing is, XML layout is annoying, vs code. If I wanted markup to define my app i'd just make it in HTML5
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Well... I never used the designer... At least never used to build my UI, sometimes (often?) used it to preview the UI.. but always directly writing the Xaml. The designer should be renamed "Previewer" would work better! 
I too prefer C# over XAML.
However some of the things that Xaml do just CANNOT be written in C# (attached property and markup extensions come to mind), once I accepted that, and took advantage of Visual Studio code completion / intellisense (such as automatically renaming end tag and closing tag) I got over it.
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Super Lloyd wrote: Seriously I don't quite understand the anti-WPF crowd.
I do understand it.
If you try to program WPF the same way as you would WinForm etc, then WPF appears to be extremely tedious and difficult to work with. When learning it, I recall swearing at the treeview - I just wanted to set an item to selected and it took quite a lot of code to do it.... I could not simply walk the tree nodes, as they would not be created before expanding - and they would be created after the call to expand returned, meaning I had to walk the tree one level at the time, queuing the next expansion level on the dispatcher with low priority...
... Then I replaced all that complicated code with databinding on IsSelected to a boolean in my ViewModel 
Now I am used to it, I find anything else tedious. Happy I invested the time to learn WPF - but if you "just need a UI right now" and am not already familiar with MVVM then I can see where the frustration comes from.
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Quote: Seriously I don't quite understand the anti-WPF crowd.
Compared to WinForms, WPF is a caveman, at least with the designer. I find the same annoying, unproductive approach with Xamarin XAML. We had a great UI designer 20+ years ago in VB, which at one time (VB3) was written in assembler. Why is this generation of MS product developers incapable of doing in C# what a previous generation did in assembler, in the context of a truly productive UI designer? Making WinForms work well with a designer is just as difficult as making XAML work well with a designer. Are we entering the first generation akin to the culture in the movei "Idiocracy"?
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My parser generator is probably ready to use. It wasn't rushed like Newt was. Of course, you never know until you try it with *someone else's* stuff. =)
It's got LALR(1) and LL(1), but you really only need LL(1) as far as I know.
LALR(1) is more for parsing stuff like C# and javascript.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Are you going to put it up on here when it's finished ?
"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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It's part of the Parser Construction Kit (now with LALR! - in my best shamwow voice)
It's posted here. The latest source is here
and always at the GitHub link.
Use the *first* link above for a basic overview. The second link covers the LALR bit
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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WPF is just Microsoft proprietary HTML?
I tried it back in the day, but I'd use WinForms over WPF any time (and take any scaling issues for granted)
However, if I was seriously looking into desktop development these days I'd take a look at Electron[^].
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So, you're a grownup now.
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hardly, but i play one on TV
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I will admit I wasn't expecting much. I had an XBox 360, so I expect MS hardware to be ... well, worse than their software can be.
But ... this is good. It's just so much more fluid than the same thing done on the Wookietab. Chrome with 5 tabs, VS2019 installing, Live mail installing, and it's smooth as a Jimmy Scott cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U". And the Type Cover is pretty nice to use.
The Wookietab would slug under that load.
Maybe MS can get hardware right ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Which Surface, specifically? Give links or it didn't happen.
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Only a Pro 3 - old, I know, but ... it's tidy!
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4023445/surface-pro-3-features[^] The "middle of the road" version: 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, i5 processor.
And the same exact LCD as the Wookietab, but with no air gap between the display and the digitiser. It's a damn good display.
My only concern is battery life: it's half the size of the Wookies.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Thanks for sharing. I will check it out. I've been interested for a long time in some "pad solution" that I could use to do software dev.
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Me too! In the past I've shied away from laptops because they're not enough iron for my needs (which aren't much to start with).
/ravi
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I have an (older) laptop now, but it is 8GB, i7 and I got it very cheap originally (only $799). I removed the old HDD and replaced with 500GB SSD and it still does very well.
The most intensive dev I do is Android Development with android Studio and associated Android Emulator running at the same time. The old laptop keeps up fairly well for all that. Mostly needs more ram.
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I have an old Dell laptop, eight years old, 17" screen, i7, 16GB, 500GB SSD and it runs like stink (that means really well and fast). The SSD and increasing the memory from 8GB to 16Gb made a *huge* difference. The battery is a bit worn down, only lasts 3 hours instead of 4.5 hours but I use it on mains power nearly all the time so it doesn't really matter. The screen is just now starting to show a bright patch at one corner occasionally.
No touch screen but the pointing stick and the touchpad work very well along with a standard old Dell mouse. Lots of USBs and supports three screens via the docking station.
It's eight years old but stands up well against my lenovo work lappy which still has only an i5 and a 250 SSD.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Agreeing w/below, I have a Dell Precision M6500[^] laptop. It's part of a series that is described as a portable desktop - pretty accurate description
Bought refurbished for $400
17" screen, two HDD (can configure to raid 1 if you wish).
A real keyboard (! ! ! ! !) that feels great.
It's heavy and battery life is shortish - but when buying I considered that, for the most part, I and other laptop users keep it plugged in whilst working, anyway.
I did update the boot HDD to SSD. Came with Win7 Pro when I bought it and will stay that way.
Probably newer and faster version available - i7's versions are available.
A have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I have a gaming laptop from MSI and it is quite capable. I do programming in CUDA and OpenGL and it handles those nicely.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Get a tab with a "proper" keyboard - using the Win10 soft keyboard for coding is an exercise in frustration. If nothing else, you need the "full layout" for most of the coding symbols, and that takes nearly half the screen in landscape mode. This Type Cover isn't too bad at all: the keys are nice and large, and I'm typing with pretty high accuracy on it already, which is unusual for me.
VS2019 install is done now, and a quick test says "It works" - Hello World ran as a winforms app, but I don't have "serious" source on it yet so I can't test a real world app.
The VS Winforms designer doesn't work too well with touch, either - I had to use the touchpad to drag a button from the toolbox and "hold and drag" didn't work. There may be a setting buried there somewhere but you know what VS settings are like these days ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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There is just one USB port right (3.0)?
What about if you add a mouse, does that take up the USB port?
Or will a wireless mouse connect directly to the onboard bluetooth? I'm not sure how that works.
I'm sure a bluetooth keyboard will pair right? But can you do both mouse and keyboard on the onboard bluetooth? Thanks
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You could plug in a hub, or use one of those radio keyboard / mice adapters.
Not sure about dual device bluetooth - I've only one BT KB and it's paired with my Fire TV stick - but my general experience with BT is that it's generally flaky at best ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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