Cobra Forums

Hello all,
Well, I've been messing around with Cobra in my free time for a week now, and I thought maybe I should post a quick review of what I think about it so far.

Coming from a Python background I find the syntax very nice. I'm still learning certain aspects of it, but the general syntax is much similar to Python than, say, C. This I feel makes for faster development time and a more enjoyable time doing it. It also feels like there is a little, say, Java/C# to it ( and indeed there is ), which adds a little more structure to the code that wouldn't be there otherwise.

The second part of Cobra I feel many people have commented on and quite like, but I must post about too, are the error messages. They are much more informative than other languages I have used, and that, too, makes for a much more enjoyable developing experience. This is certainly one feature that future versions of Cobra should keep up with.

Now, time for me to complain. There is only one aspect that I dislike about Cobra so far: GUI programming. Right now GUI programming seems to be a little bit of a pain. I realize, of course, that Cobra is a fairly young language and that there will be other GUI libraries available in time, but for right now, it's my only complaint.

I believe that wraps up my review. I'm no guru, and I'm not sure how much this means anyway, but I thought I should put it up here so that: Mr. Charles could get a little feedback on his project; ( <- you don't need those in Cobra ), and for any new comers to Cobra, so they could have something to sort of relate it to.

Sincerely,

- JimmyD

Thanks for the feedback. I think the GTK# GUI library is okay, but the lack of autocompletion in any editor or IDE is still a bummer.

Yeah,
GTK# is definitely the best so far. I'm only using Notepad for editing Cobra code so far, but when I get to the point of using an editor then that would be a very nice, perhaps even important, feature.

- WolfShield

GUI is one of my issues to.

I'm a big wxPython fan for GUI work, especially if you are developing for systems like Mac OS X. There is some recent work with wx.NET which works with Cobra. I think it is primarily for Windows environments, but it can be made to work on Linux with a little effort, and OS X with a little more effort.

The beauty of wx is that it uses the native GUI and looks like a native application. On OS X though you have to create a app bundle otherwise the GUI doesn't respond to any events (e.g. button presses and controls don't work). There is an older binary version of wx.NET for OS X that I managed to install and get going.

I think the downside of something like wx is that it may not interoperate with native .NET GUI stuff (e.g. bitmaps) so if you are using other libraries (e.g. .NET image processing) there may be some overhead converting between formats. I presume this would hold true for GTK# too ??

Cheers,
Brendan.

I can't say about the GTK# question,
But I'm also a big fan of wxPython and use it most often, so thank you very much for the forward to wx.NET ( I hadn't heard about ). I'll be looking into it ( and perhaps posting some code if I get it to work ).

Thanks again,

- JimmyD