non-scripting no-install cross-platform development: which way to go, keeping an eye about the future?

Question

scripting/dynamic languages aside, what choices do i have (for a foss project) to find an environment that is: - quite efficient - allow me to develop applications that can be installed simply unzipping a directory (that is, if a vm is needed, it should be already installed in the vast majority of cases, especially for windows machines) - the usual needs: cross platform networking, multithreading/multiprocessing, some kind of non-ugly ipc and synchronization mechanism, i/o and possibly db connectivity, and a quite rich library of already developed stuff i can put to use (say http, https, cryptoghraphy, ...) , possibly including a gui that is fast and pretty well integrated with the user environment (windows folk: "desktop", d&d, ...)

i'm thinking about c++ + boost + gtk/glib or qt or wx ; java; .net/mono

i would like not to "bet" on a platform that's not going to be 100% supported and "kept modern" in the next few years; i'm not quite sure what direction oracle-java is going to take (and i'm not madly in love with java memory usage), i'm not so sure about mono future support either, and c++ and stuff seems very time-consuming....

what do you suggest?

Answer 1

Qt with C++ can do all that, or has external libraries available for it, and I'd bet money it will be viable for the next few years, maybe even bigger than it is now, since it just went LPGL.

The main benefit I can see is that most of what you want is built-in to Qt already, so it will be like one-stop shopping.

Also, C++ development with Qt is not painful. It is quite fun.

Answer 2

C is already widely used in FOSS, it is extremely efficient, allows for programs that can be installed by simply extracting an archive file, there is a vast library of already developed stuff including a few for developing cross-platform GUI based applications and it's not going away any time soon.