GUI languages comparison

[WiP] languages comparison for GUI.

C

Current language for GUI.

• Pros:
  • Well-known
  • Excellent tools support
  • Fast and light
  • Static typing
• Cons:
  • No garbage collection
  • No type inference
  • No closures, higher-order functions and flexible containers
  • No memory protection
  • Somewhat weak type system

C++

• Pros (compared to C):
  • Better containers
  • Easier memory/resource management (RAII)
• Cons (compared to C):
  • Complex and hard to use
  • Ugly

Lua+MetaLua

• Pros:
  • Relatively well-known
  • Good tools support
  • Compact and easy to learn
  • Garbage collection
  • Easy C bindings
  • REPL available on device
  • Architecture-independent code
  • Extensible syntax
  • Fast and light (with LNUM patch)
  • Memory protection
  • Closures, higher-order functions, flexible containers
  • Strong type system (with "No implicit type conversions" patch)
• Cons:
  • Dynamic typing, lacks most of error checking before run time.

HaXe (over Neko VM)

• Pros:
  • Static typing with type inference
  • Compact and easy to learn
  • Easy C bindings
  • Architecture-independent code
  • Garbage collection
  • Memory protection
  • Relatively fast and light
  • Closures, higher-order functions, flexible containers
  • Strong type system
• Cons:
  • Obscure
  • Bad tools support

NekoML

• Pros:
  • Static typing with type inference
  • Compact and easy to learn
  • Easy C bindings
  • Architecture-independent code
  • Garbage-collection
  • Memory protection
  • Fast and light
  • Closures, higher-order functions, flexible containers
  • Strong type system
• Cons:
  • Obscure
  • Bad tools support

librep

• Pros:
  • Compact lisp dialect (hybrid of elisp and scheme)
  • Easy C bindings
  • Architecture-independent (byte-)code
  • REPL available on device
  • Memory protection
  • Garbage-collection
  • Strong type system
  • Closures, higher-order functions, flexible containers
  • Compact and easy to learn
• Cons:
  • Dynamic typing, lacks most of error checking before run time.
  • Obscure
  • Virtually no tools support

ocaml

• Pros:
  • Static typing with type inference
  • Easy to learn
  • Easy C bindings
  • Architecture-independent code
  • Garbage collection
  • Memory protection
• Cons:
  • Ugly stdlib
  • Softfloat on armel not supported in stable branches
  • Compiler is no longer maintained

Vala

• Pros
  • Direct C access
  • Static typing, type inference for local variables
  • Easy to learn
  • Refcounting
  • Fast and lean, directly translated to C
• Cons
  • Object system is based on GObject
  • Still needs bindings, though those are easy to write
  • No full type inference
  • No full garbage collection