Agreed. There's only so much skilled labor available for this kind of thing.
This is exactly why I'm focusing on Python lately. Ruby is a great language but I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a web guy forever. I've already done over 10 years of web dev and I'd like to try out a couple of new problem domains before I kick the bucket.
I'll have to agree as well. The only problem for me is: if not on the web, how are we going to make GUIs that aren't severely limited to our platform? Wasn't web design supposed to solve the "platform question"?
There are a number of cross-platform GUI toolkits. For instance, QT is pretty nice wherever you put it, and KDE's been putting a lot of work into making their libraries and such work on Windows.
I'm not a huge fan of Qt simply because I can't get it to feel natural on Gnome, my desktop of choice. I've looked into Gtk+, but I'm not so sure I want to commit to it yet.
Are there plans to make Qt feel more natural on Gnome and OS X?
This is exactly why I'm focusing on Python lately. Ruby is a great language but I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a web guy forever. I've already done over 10 years of web dev and I'd like to try out a couple of new problem domains before I kick the bucket.