RE: Re: GUI question

> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Non-programmer here... Can a programmer tell from the interface what
> language a database application was written in?
> >
> > (I'm a writer, this is background research for a subject I know
> little about--yet.)
> >
> > Thanks, Karen
> >
> 
> Well ... without looking at the code, probably not. There are two
> components to a GUI application -- the language, and the GUI toolkit.
> An expert GUI programmer can undoubtedly tell which toolkit was used
> just by looking at the interface. But nearly all of the toolkits have a
> native C/C++ mode, plus bindings for the major scripting languages --
> Perl, Python and Ruby.
> 
> The exception would be the Java "Swing" toolkit. It's usually easily
> recognized, and the underlying code is usually Java, although there are
> bindings for other languages.
> 
And to top that off, there's nothing saying an application has to be written
in a single language.
It's quite possible to have a Java application that's launched by a C++ stub
and itself calls (J)Ruby routines for some tasks, Scala for something else,
and uses SOAP or REST calls to a C# system that can realistically be seen as
part of the application because it has no other use than to forward calls
from that application to a Delphi backbone which only has that C# system as
an interface to it.