I've been poking around with Erlang's wx module and this tutorial. I haven't used wxwidgets before, so maybe this is just how it's done, but this code seems really terrible to me:
%% create widgets
T1001 = wxTextCtrl:new(Panel, 1001,[]),
ST2001 = wxStaticText:new(Panel, 2001,"Output Area", []),
B101 = wxButton:new(Panel, 101, [{label, "&Countdown"}]),
B102 = wxButton:new(Panel, ?wxID_EXIT, [{label, "E&xit"}]),
wxFrame:show(Frame),
Do people really have to assign widget IDs to widgets when creating them? Is it normal to name the variable that points to the widget after the widget's ID?
I don't know about Erlang but in C++ (and in the other bindings I know about) it's often preferable to use wxID_ANY as the widget id, meaning that you don't care about its specific value, and then use Connect() to handle events from the widget. Explicit ids may be convenient if you need to find the widget by its id later (although you can also use widget names for this) or if you need a consecutive range for ids (e.g. it would make sense to use ids 100, 101, ..., 109 for the buttons of a calculator as you could then easily deduce each buttons value from its id) but there is no need to always use them.
As for the naming, there is, of course, no need to use this strange convention (and a quick look at the tutorial shows that it's a personal preference of the author -- which, needless to say, I don't share).