Interview
Why did you start this project?
I'm a long time Delphi user. In 2003 Borland doesn’t seem to give an exact roadmap for 64bit systems and they were pushing people to use .NET. Even though .NET is cool, it doesn’t give the performance of a natively compiled executable and the runtime gives more headache for people who got low end machine. When distributing apps in internet you cannot force people to download the 20mb .NET runtime. So I decided to check other options. I checked QT (the newer one) but just for checking its feasibility I have to pay $. I played with wx back in 2000 and it was not that user friendly when u are not using an IDE it with. I tried wxDesigner at that time but it wouldn’t allow you to test it. Just for saving the output file wxDesigner wants money; this is ridiculous for a demo program that don’t even give the evaluators a chance.Finally in 2003 I evaluated wx very seriously and found that the only problem it had is a decent Delphi like designer. Even though Dialog Blocks was there, it is not very easy for a newbie from a Delphi world to use. Since I know some cool IDE components in Delphi, I made some initial prototypes in Delphi and the result is a crude version of the program which will be the base for the future wx-DevC++. After 3 revisions the program was able to generate code for 5 components (button, label, edit box, combo box and radio box). Although there is no one supported my efforts I got criticized for using absolute co-ordinate system in the code generation. Using this crude version I created couple of utilities; this give faith in me to continue my work. I thought of writing a full blown IDE but thought it would make me deviate from the original idea. So I was looking for an IDE where I can hook my designer.
I found DevC++ to be the perfect candidate. It got everything except the Form Designer. So I started hacking the DevC++ code to include the Form Designer. Finally in July 2004 I added the wxForm Designer in the DevC++ and thus wxDevC++ was born. After couple of months of intial release, Thomas Unterthiner helped me with the webpage redesign and then Upcase helped me update the wxWidgets libraries used in wxDevC++. Around this time, Malcolm and Tony started helping people in the mailing list and in the wxforum and soon they started helping me with the development.
Tony was
managing the project, answering questions about the
project and helping me fix quite a lot of problems and
Mal was busy writing the Initial tutorial for wxDevC++
and answering almost all the questions posted in the
wxForum. He is also instrumental in converting all the
wxWidgets samples to be wx-DevC++ compatible project
files.
Later Esteben started creating a version of wx-DevC++
that make the components to be easily installed to the
wx-Devc++ (this is not in the main source but we are
investigating to add it). Last but not least Joel Low
modified the wx-DevC++'s gcc support to add Vc++
support. Recently his code is merged and will be
available in 6.10 beta.
What contributions have you made?
Almost all the code until Beta 6.7, this includes all the core designer part integration in DevC++ code base and almost all the components (except 3-4 components from Tony and Malcom)What features do you most want to see in wxDev-C++?
- Less bloated C++ Intellisense parser
- Code Folding
- Multiple Compiler support (Joel already completed VC++ support but it will be nice to see DMARS and Borland Compilers)
- More Drag and drop components for 3rd party wxWidgets components.
In what areas do you think others could help?
People can help us create more components for 3rd party WxWidgets components. And write better helping aids.