Re: Some experience of a beginner

[Gregory John Casamento]

Thank you for your feedback and for sharing your experience with us.   We're 
trying to reduce the amount of configuration and setup, particularly on Windows.

Currently GNUstep runs best on UNIX variants, but we are working on making the 
Windows version easier to use.
 
GJC

--
Gregory Casamento -- OLC, Inc 
# GNUstep Chief Maintainer

----- Original Message ----
From: ZuLuuuuuu <canol.gokel@gmail.com>
To: discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 7:02:02 AM
Subject: Some experience of a beginner

Hello,

I recently began to learn Objective-C and had posted a comment
recently on comp.lang.objective-c. The comment had a part also about
GNUstep and Nikolaus Schaller recommended me to also share my
experience with this group. It is an experience on a Windows operating
system. I am a beginner to ObjC and also for desktop programming
languages so please take it as an end-user point of view :)

Here is the comment (with a few additions):

---------------------------
Hi,

I developed web pages for years (ASP, PHP etc...). But I also wanted
to be able to develop desktop applications. Last 1-2 years I learned
some languages like Pascal, C, Visual Basic but just the basics of
these languages. Now I really want to participate in a medium/big
project and want to learn a language deeply. A language which is very
strong and not "interpreted". After a small exploring, I found
GNUstep
web site and I liked the atmospher and the things written in it. I
bought Programming in Objective-C by Stephen G. Kochan and come to
the
Part II, "The Foundation Framework". I understand the subjects so
far,
they were not so hard at all and they are actually fun.

Part II is the part where you begin to use GNUstep framework. But it
is too hard! To prepare to compile a simple program you should
install
GNUstep framework, arrange some system pathes, compile another .dll
files and write makefile. Then it comes to compile step and you
should
open a program called MSYS go to the appropriate directory and
compile
it. After compiling it you cannot just double click on .exe to make
it
run. You should also run it from MSYS or it will give an error.
Sometimes there
is no .exe file, there is an .app which you should use the command
openapp to
run it. And finally, when you run the application a warning/error says
that you
should arrange a server preference or something, also the application
icon is
hidden behind the start menu...

In short, after beginning the Part II, "The Foundation Framework", I
loose my encourage. I feel like I am learning a useless language for
end-users. I don't care "much" for end-users actually but end-users
cannot make these steps at all and it is important to send a program
I
coded to my friend to be used. For example, in GTK it is enough for
end-users to just install GTK Runtime Environment to use GTK
applications, but in GNUstep, there are a lot of steps after
installation of GNUstep to use the applications, which amateur or
low-
experienced users cannot do, even understand.
---------------------------

By the way, thaks for your effort for such a big framework. I hope I
will learn ObjC enough to contribute this project in future.

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