Java has been successful everywhere but the desktop. Or at least that's what people here. It's big on the server and that downs out the desktop news.
What else went wrong?
Applets.
Microsoft's battle with Java.
For the longest time, there really has been only ONE desktop. It was the only market that mattered for developoers.
We're finally getting desktop competition from Linux and Mac OS X.
A lot of the cool things about OS X are the little things. Like closing the notebook lid.
Why use Java?
Productivity. Lots of APIs. Tools. Community. Security and reliability. End-to-end story. Portable skills. Lots more. Memory management and platform neutrality.
Swing API. It's the 747 cockpit of UI toolkits. Lots of components on jars.com, etc. Very extensible.
Swing problems. Complexity. It's easy, but finding the easy way is hard. You need to watchout for performance pitfalls too.
Good stuff. Abstract data models. Map data structures to models.
And then you've got Java2D (like Postscript/Quartz/etc), Java3D, Advanced imaging, Media, Networking, and so on.
Used NetBeans IDE to show us the source to his Java-based presentation system. (Very cool, but I note a distinct lack of comments in his code.) It does reformatting on the fly--rather quickly. Makes good use of threading.
Lots of screen shots and demos. (But very little OS X specific stuff. I'm sorta disappointed.)
Posted by jzawodn at October 02, 2002 04:04 PM
The great thing about Java and its big problem is just how abstract you can get with it.. Sometimes it's hard to find the right balance.. So I have some coworkers who have no clue about interfaces (really) and at least one who makes everything so abstract it makes it hell to read and debug.
