On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, Vladimir G Ivanovic wrote:
> Far and away the most important attribute of a technology is its
> reliability. Features don't do anyone any good unless they work. Java's
> unreliability is a cancer that eats at everyone's confidence. Java has
> enough features to last a lifetime. It's now time to make them work.
Windows' unreliability hasn't stopped Microsoft from owning the desktop
and making inroads on the Internet. How much of Java's unreliability
is due to the unstable platform the JVM itself is running on? Sun's
SDK on Windows is remarkedly stable on my system, although I had to
break my habit of running xclipboard all the time. ;)
As for "making it work", the general attitude I see on, say, Usenet,
is that because Java doesn't look and feel 100% like Windows, Java is
broken and not worth using. I've seen Windows developers gang up
on Borland demanding that Borland drop their Solaris and Linux Java
products and concentrate only on Windows, because "only Window developers
count."
What selfish whiners!
It would be nice if things like, say, JFileChooser lived up to
their API. I spent two weeks designing and coding my first JFileChooser
accessory, but had to abandon it when I discovered that JFileChooser
itself resorts to using a fixed dialog size of 300x500, making
any but the most rudimentary accessory unusable. Sigh. I really
did expect better, here.
I applaud Sun for making their Bug Parade available to the world.
Unfortunately, it also sets them up for complaints from developers
regarding bugs/features which have existed for 2+ years and which still
aren't fixed. Some of these can make providing true professional-quality
cross-platform applications difficult, if not impossible. You can find
3rd party libraries that address some of the lacking bits, but most of
those are available only for Windows platforms, ignoring the *nix and
Mac and everyone else.
There is also an unfortunate habit among some of Sun's engineers to
regard reports caused by their failure to implement the published APIs
as RFEs instead of the BUGS they truly are. We developers regard the
published API as a contract, as does every general OO text I've ever read.
Closing these cases 'will not be fixed' or claiming they're RFEs does
nothing at all to impress us.
For what I need (writing GUIs) the APIs do have a lot of little bugs and
a few bug-eyed monsters. I guess I would like to see Sun spend some time
addressing some of the bugs in the APIs which make Swing look like
some poor bastard cousin of Windows. Printing, Fonts, JFileChooser,
etc, are all basic things end users will see, and the roughness along
these edges makes life difficult for developers, too. These items
affect the *nix developers as well, especially the lack of print support
on Linux.
--
Joi Ellis Software Engineer
Aravox Technologies [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
No matter what we think of Linux versus FreeBSD, etc., the one thing I
really like about Linux is that it has Microsoft worried. Anything
that kicks a monopoly in the pants has got to be good for something.
- Chris Johnson
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