Are MATLAB GUIs good? I think so, while others dont!

Hi Everyone, This is a very generic question. I have been using MATLAB GUIde for GUI development since its 2007b version. Though it is stringent in its features compared to other GUI building platforms, I am comfortable with it, and most of GUIde's features are both forward and reverse compatible (except somethings like uitable etc). I recently got an hands on at R2014a. I think the GUIde has not changed much in the last six or seven years. I do not expect it to change much in the near future. But my colleagues think otherwise and advocate against using MATLAB GUI's, saying that they change a lot with time and releases and updating the GUI's for every release is by itself a tedious task. What do I do/tell to convince them? Is there some statistics of how stagnant the MATLAB GUI has been over the years? Have all the apparent changes in the GUI due to Newer Operating Systems, Changing MATLAB syntaxes (for example use of ~ symbol for unused arguments etc) alone?

Thanks for your support!

Answer 1

[per isakson]

I have made GUIs with Matlab since it was introduced in the early nineties. We are still (R2013b) using GUIs that I made in the late nineties. I cannot recall that I have ever been forced by new releases to update old GUIs. IMO: the backward compatibility is good and "[...] every release is by itself a tedious task" is not correct. Ask your colleagues for specific examples. New features might make it tempting to update, but it does not force you.

I don't use GUIDE.

I miss features in Matlab that was supported in VB4 in the nineties, e.g. combo-list-box.

uitable is now officially supported. However,

    uitree,  This function is undocumented and will change in a future release
    uitab,   This function is undocumented and will change in a future release

"Is there some statistics ..." nothing but the release notes as far as I know.

"all the apparent changes in the GUI" I don't understand. (The changes to the Matlab desktop belongs to another thread.)

One good thing with the Matlab lack of gui-features is that you can concentrate on the real problems and blame the poor look-and-feel of the GUI on The MathWorks.