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blackrock

Is there any hope that Elixir can be used for client side programs, with GUI windows?

Or will Elixir only be used for server-side programs, that don't require a graphical user interface?

I would like to program video games with Elixir. But the examples I see online are rather immature.

And it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in using Elixir to program desktop GUI programs.

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Supposedly there’s going to be a massive unveiling by the next Elixir Conf of a library that’s been developed by the guy who headed Xbox Live. It’s called Scenic and there’s a lot of anticipation.

I'm looking forward to this.

https://elixirforum.com/t/3-elixirconf-2017-elixir-native-ui...

I think there's hope, but probably not any time soon. There was a discussion about this recently on the forums and the general consensus was "use java or electron."

That said, I've written a CLI in Elixir now and it's pretty good for that. Also the Elixir community if full of hackers so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody makes this comment obsolete very quickly.

GUI abstractions and Erlang abstractions have a lot of impedence mismatch. wxWindows is really confusing to use in my opinion. ex11 actually kind of makes sense, but it was mostly built in the stone age of x11, so widgets look wierd, and there's not any sort of modern font support. It's not too hard to add things, but you have to understand x11 protocol and do all the work (I added support for window titles)

There's definitely interest in using Elixir for GUI programs, in addition to Scenic which will be unveiled at ElixirConf there's also Uderzo which is pretty neat, but definitely still alpha or pre-alpha

https://github.com/cdegroot/uderzo_poncho

You can transpile Elixir to Javascript https://github.com/elixirscript/elixirscript

There are a few projects working on creating a purely elixir web dev experience for both front and back end, but no mature solution exists yet.

It's possible to do it now, but not with the "Native" ui you may be implying.

Wings3D created a 3d modeling program with application, including UI, written in erlang. http://www.wings3d.com/

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