It's wise to have a plan of action when developing a GUI application. Regardless of what programming language you use and regardless of what GUI library you use, getting down on paper a solidified idea of what your application will do and what it will look like is 80% of the battle. Coding is the easy part.

So, what does an efficient approach to GUI programming look like? In outline form, it's simply a set of steps that builds on the prior foundation. These steps, taken sequentially, can virtually guarantee you'll come out on the other side with a solid application that does exactly what you want.

Let's look at the outline and then examine each step:

1. Purpose - define the purpose of the program
2. Tasks - specify the general functionality from an end-user's perspective
3. GUI - what the application will look like
4. Widgets - determine what widgets will be used to accomplish the tasks
5. Language - decide on a language
6. GUI Library - decide on a GUI widget set
7. Code - code the application