Re: The industry standard

[Jörg Rathlev <jrathlev gmx net>]

> > Would anyone like to comment on what they see will be the industry
> > standard Desktop: Gnome & something or KDE?
> >
>
> Neither one. I consider it a mistake to think of it this way if you're
> talking about programming APIs; programmers always choose from lots of
> alternatives (on Windows for example: Perl, Python, C, C++, Delphi, MFC,
> Qt, Tcl/Tk, Visual Basic, and more). This is when MFC is the clear
> monopoly choice and standard, and granted MFC is most popular but the
> alternatives are viable and well-supported.

Developers have a choice, but most users will not use several systems at the
same time, they'll decide on one. The question is whether more users will
decide on GNOME or on KDE.

Of course GNOME applications work with KDE, and vice versa, but most users
will prefer to run a GNOME application with GNOME. Why? Because it was
designed for GNOME, and it will work better with GNOME (one advantage is
that it has the same look and feel - that's one major advantage already).

Which of the two systems will be the leading one? That for which more
applications are designed, and which is more user friendly. Currently, it's
hard to guess which one that'll be.

Maybe someone will start developing a third system (no problem with free
software), and that'll "win". Maybe MacOS is the leading desktop system in a
few years. Maybe Microsoft decides to make Windows free software - then, I
guess, Windows would "win".

Regarding Joel's question: I can only advise you to try to keep as large
parts of your code as possible completely system independent (that's
standard C/C++ and much extra work). If you want to develop for the industry
standard desktop operating system, develop for Windows (still keeping your
code system independent!).


> So, you may as well ask whether vi or Emacs will win programmer's hearts
> in the end; and that battle has been going on for close to 20 years.

Who says it won't end some day? ;-)

Seriously, I think that's something different: People don't design code for
vi or Emacs (or any other editor). But applications are designed for a
certain environment. If all code you receive from others looked much better
in Emacs, would you choose vi?


Jörg