Josh: I just want to say I'm a huge fan or your work--a huge fan! Yesterday was one of those 3 extra strength aspirin days, a bad day at work, a heat wave in So CA and a little frustration with the scene graph all rolled into one. I should have waited until after dinner to post. Let me try this again.
I love JavaFX, it might possibly be the most powerful GUI (read multi- media engine) ever. XNA also looks pretty good, but we all know what its problems are. The frustration I have is more with our collective industry and all of the legacy kludge that we can never completely free ourselves from. e.g. EJB1, EJB2, EJB3, JDO, JPA....one of these years we will actually solve this problem. Then there's the "what IDE am I using '''this''' month". I do not want to repeat myself, we all know where this is headed. As I work more with JavaFX it is becoming 'painfully' obvious to me that--here we go again--"everyone will need to know one more technology to get something done...although in the case of JavaFX I think this is warranted. Instead of collectively evolving to simplify the Java 'stack' we are expanding in all directions-which can be a good thing if done properly. Unfortunately I'm not convinced that diversity has always helped Java. Java was supposed to bring elegance, safety, and efficiency of deployment to our industry. In some ways it has accomplished this goal and in some ways it's become the kludge it promised to replace. I guess in some ways if we knew back in 1995 that we would someday have this problem (complete market dominance) we would have cheered. On the other hand Java has become bigger than C+ +, Visual Basic, Delphi, and Smalltalk combined (all collectively the dominate platforms of the day). I leave C out, because C has no direct competition...depending on how many hairs someone wants to split. I'm not sure it would be good to replace C at this point...but that's another thread in another group. The problem with Java, as I see it, is the same problem that the Linux desktop has--diversity. Sure competition is good--sometimes--but sometimes getting everyone onto 'one' bus is better for all travelers. I think this is what makes C so great...it's just C99. JavaFX is, without a doubt, a massively disruptive technology. Your team has fixed several pain points in media programming to the extent that anyone not using it will be at a distinct disadvantage in the marketplace. So here we go again...yet another X. Although I see JavaFX as a good thing, it could become just another distraction in an already confusing space. The problem I am having is--and this is an answer to your question--of "what is it that's bothering people and or making it hard for people to approach JavaFX?" 1) Trying to figure out where the seams are. In other words how do I best integrate JavaFX within the scope of an overall project. This comes in several forms. a) New/Old projects that just need a little sizzle. b) And those wind in your face full-screen graphics mode 3D games, or game-like presentation apps. Sorry, I'm not sure if your team intended this, but I cannot mentally break out of the mindset that every app with JavaFX will have a completely different event loop with animated graphics primitives. This is good, well for me it is, but I can see it as ... well ... here we go again off in another direction, which, if everyone follows is great, but I can see many if not the entire industry being left behind. Remember back in 1997 when HTML tables were HOT! and everyone was saying how Applets were going to change the web. It was just about the same time the talking heads were saying that .pdf's would replace HTML. I'm still waiting for Applets to arrive 12 years later. I know, I know, everybody's used them to recalculate their mortgages...but if we want to be honest Applets really didn't get off the ground. Which brings me to my second point. 2) Flash/Flex - To me (your millage may vary, I'm entitled to my own opinion so please nobody flame me, but I know some of you won't be able to resist) Flash (Flex is just a wrapper) is a virus. I dare anyone to connect a computer to the Internet and just try to keep Flash from getting onto that computer. You (and your team) need to find a way to make the browser plug-in install like Flash. Anything short of this is just more pain for everyone. I can speak for myself that I am SO OVER APPLETS...unless your audience has the exact_right_version_of_java forget it. And hoping for your viewers to have the exact right version is ... well I'm not going there with this PG audience. Suffice it to say "Applets rest in piece". I just feel it in my bones that JavaFX is going to drink from the same Applet poisoned well. You've already gone ahead and designed a new (and in some ways a better) language than Java (if I haven't gotten my point across already--nice job) can you 'please' finish the job and release and new ...ahem... virus, uh, I mean browser plug-in runtime. I hope you get my point without my having to write another 1000 words. I cannot imagine I am the only one who feels this way. 3) This is what set my hair on fire the other day - and I think this is what you are probably most interested in hearing from me - I approached JavaFX from a programmer's perspective. I downloaded the syntax white papers read through all of them committed the language to memory as best as I could then started developing my first hello solar system app and bamm %$^&*...@! I ran straight into the first meteorite. Wrong approach! The better way (in my opinion) is to forgo the syntax and start with the Stage and Scene graph rudiments and build on top of a solid foundation. If you miss those parts in the beginning, as I did, you end up with this pretty new language in your head and lot's of expectations with absolutely no understanding of what you have in your hands. I made the mistake of approaching JavaFX as Turbo Swing3 rather than the full stack multi-media (read Flash) engine that it is. You might consider spinning your educational materials so that new comers approach JavaFX with the initial understanding that they are NOT coding for MVC, nor Swing on vitamins, but rather for the stealth game console that JavaFX essentially is. The sales point of "you can write down to the full-Java stack threw me off and that's exactly how I approached it by thinking that I was going to write a Java app with some nice add ins--wrong. How I now understand it, and I might still be wrong, please correct me, is that with JavaFX I'm going to write a multimedia app with the potential, but will not necessarily, extend down to the Java stack. When I'm done my users may think they are looking at Swing (or MVC) but they are really looking at a 3-space + sound application that may or may not look like a conventional desktop/applet app. Thanks for not taking offense to my earlier post and flaming me off list-I was having a bad day. And thanks again for a great job on JavaFX! As far as what I said about the scripting language falling short - let me apologize, I completely mis-understood the intent of the technology. - e On May 6, 10:40 am, Joshua Marinacci <jos...@gmail.com> wrote: > I would really like to hear back from Ed. He is not the first person > to have a bad reaction to JavaFX initially. There seems to be some > sort of a mental hurdle that a lot of people face, including myself 2 > years ago. Once they play with it enough they suddenly 'get it' and > become happy and very productive, even with the earlier buggy > releases. I've heard from many smart people going through this, so > clearly there is more going on here than just "It's different, so I > don't like it". Perhaps we are presenting the language improperly, or > we are demonstrating the wrong features first. I'm not sure what's > going on but I'd like to dig down into it and find out. > > - Josh > > On May 6, 2009, at 7:45 AM, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > > > > > Summary of OP: > > > I looked at it, it sucked. I won't tell you why; instead I'll just > > whinge, because I'm a non-contributing zero. > > > Ed, post some constructive criticism, or go away. > > > NB: Michael, Gladwell is a gifted author, a real yarnspinner, but you > > shouldn't quote him with the presumption that his delusional ranting > > has any basis in fact, at least, not in polite company. However, in > > the vein of completing the argument in a proposed faulty logic frame > > being just as effective as proving the logic is false in the first > > place: People who have actually used JavaFX almost never complain. If > > you follow the posse, or read anything about java at all, you'd know > > that the update to get is 6u10, which you didn't have. No wonder stuff > > isn't working quite as well as it should; the fact that it does work > > in the first place is a small miracle. > > > Joshua, do you know when apple will roll out something with the > > flavour of 6u10 across all macs? My mac is still on 1.6.0_07-b06-153. > > Could be because I've been downloading releases from > > developer.apple.com. > > > On May 6, 3:13 am, Ed <edwilson...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Why is JavaFX such an extreme departure from Java? At least Flex has > >> ActionScript and MXML--something that anyone reading this list can > >> figure out without having to look up and strain to grok. > > >> I am trying, really trying, to get into JavaFX but I just cannot > >> tolerate it's ugliness. JavaFX has to be the single most unintuitive > >> language to come out since COBOL. I mean really...can you be > >> serious? > > >> I know that on one of the recent podcasts the posse was in agreement > >> that JavaFX was going to be the future of desktop Java but I > >> respectfully disagree. There is just no possible way any sizable > >> group of critical mass will ever adopt JavaFX. As with any > >> technology, there will be 'pockets of users' but the whole reason we > >> came over to Java from C++ was for the elegance and safety of Java. > >> The write once redevelop everywhere fantasy has been painful for the > >> past 15 years; Java is just now coming of age where we can actually > >> write something once and get the rest for free. Why did Sun, now > >> Oracle, ever let JavaFX out of the lab? > > >> JavaFX will do more harm than good for Java; the most JavaFX will do > >> is make people consider Flex, and or Silverlight all that much more. > > >> What's so wrong with Swing anyway, why can't we just rev Swing and > >> Java3D? > > >> I can see Groovy (or substitute your favorite JVM language Scala, > >> Clojure...etc here) breaking out with an elegant/terse wrapper around > >> the Swing, Java2D, Java3D primitives long...long before JavaFX ever > >> gets past the demo experiment that it is. Oracle should bury JavaFX > >> as fast as it can. > > >> That said the JavaFX 'rendering engine' is awesome. Just awesome. > >> If > >> you haven't yet tried it you are missing something truly great. > >> Oracle should roll the JavaFX engine into a standard Java7 > >> library. I > >> think JavaFX is the right idea it just needs (come on guys) a > >> realistic scripting language behind it. > > >> I know I have been hard on JavaFX, I have I hopes for the future of > >> Java and I strongly believe Java needs something like JavaFX going > >> forward. Great job to those who worked on JavaFX--as a developer I > >> know how much work it must have taken--it was a necessary first step > >> in a much needed direction. > > >> Overall I give JavaFX a 'B-' > > >> - > >> ed --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. 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