So long SUCKERS !!!

[Swing S.u.c.ks.]

Here's a snippet I took of a Java SWING developers blog:

<snip>
You try telling your users that they need to upgrade to >2Gb of memory
when all they want to run is 5 or so Java GUIs of only moderate
complexity. </p> Now I'm sure these GUI could have been better written
so as not to be resource hogs, but they weren't. Which leads me neatly
onto the other problem I have. Swing is all very nice and obviously can
work very well, but in practice there doesn't seem to be many developers
who can do Swing well and quickly. They also aren't cheap to hire. </snip>

Finally, Oh Finally, someone from the real world !!. It makes me want to
cry with joy when I finally come accross a developer who has some
business acumen as well as technical savvy. Most developers are complete
morons when it comes to what drives business.

We are currently about to roll out version 1.0 of our commercial product
- built from new (so I had a choice over what technology/language to use
at the frontend), after several months of deliberating and due
diligence, I have come to the conclusion (as much as it hurts me), that
90% if not more of our clients will be running Windoze. I must be mad to
put my company at a disadvantage (because technically, I am in the
Java/Linux camp). It would be completely insane for me to go to the
market with a front end that is not ready for prime time. The fact is
that we are all told and know in theory that we should not judge a book
by its cover - but what do we do the first thing we some beautiful
person walk past us (even though we may know that they may be a "bitch"
- in terms of personality). This is why plastic surgery is so much in
vogue at the moment - because looks *Do* make a difference morons (pull
your head out of your techie arses). Another point the enlightened OP
made was this - sure you can get Java to "dance" and (possibly) compete
with native apps on Win32 - but at what cost?. By the time you get
someone who is experienced enough to do what you want (read high fixed
costs for a vulture preying on the insane and masquerading as a
"consultant"), you could have walked accross the road, plucked a spotty
teenager from behind the counter at McDonalds and taught him/her to
design 15/20 equivalent GUIs that the "consultant" has "oh, so carefully
and gingerly handcrafted". This is overindulgence at its worst. It makes
absolutely no f**king business sense !!!. Whats the point? - the user
doesn't know (or care) about the difference.

Its sad - SWING has a lot of potential, but its still not ready for
prime time. Business people like me who have to make desicions and
compete on the desktop (almost implicitly, Windoze), will inevitably opt
for a Micro$oft solution - because although we may not love it at heart,
we must give it its due props - it gets the job done quicker and better
(as far as the end user is concerned) than SWING (incidentally or QT or
any other GUI frameowrk on Windows). Mr Gates did not get to be a
billionaire by not understanding how to "tie" people to his OS. He's got
a good thing going and he will fight tooth and nail to preserve his
territory (Who wouldn't). I mean we still have to put up with half-assed
releases from Micro$oft, and then contend with several dozen or so
"patches" afterwords, but hey what you gonna do? - it's all we've got at
the moment - and it does er, the job anyway..

In the mean time, what does the Java lobby do? - instead of
consolidating its efforts to delivering a killer blow, its got its head
far up its arse, and its split with infighting between SWING and SWT,
completely oblivious of a real threat in the desktop war,advancing from
a blindspot : Macromedia Flash.

Well for me, I haven't got the inclination or the time for these "geeky"
battles. I want to make money - and as far as I know, that goal is
reached by delivering a feature rich and responsive (read blisteringly
fast) application that has a shallow learning curve (i.e. PLF) to the
client. That unfortunately, spells Micoro$oft. You in the Java camp can
keep playing with your new SWING gadget - for me, I'm off to make some
money in the real world.

So long suckers ...!

 

[Cor Ligthert]

If you are a man (or woman) sent this with a real email address and name.

The message shows now only something about you.

One of those things is that you are probably not older than 12

And therefore it is better that I don't write anything more.

 

[Tim Ward]

Finally, Oh Finally, someone from the real world !!.
(ect ect)

Too right.

I am currently maintaining a set of tools, some written in MSVC and some in
Java. From time to time I get questions about GUI nasties to which the only
answer, after much research, turns out to be "because you told me to write
that one in Java, and that's what Java does".

Plus if you want

(a) Swing, and:
(b) sockets

to work you're just a teensy bit stuck, because all sufficiently late
versions of the JRE have a bug which causes the GUI to crash on XP
(sometimes, depending on the theme the user has selected), and all versions
of the JRE which are early enough not to have this GUI bug have catastrophic
problems with handling sockets in multiple threads.

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hello Unknown,

I have developed very *heavy* i.e. plenty of functionality and
very very rich GUI Swing application including custom graphical
components that even uses reflection and is by far very fast and
stable. It is currently running at many production sites (Banks to be
precise, which are well known for being extremelly picky, paranoid
and rarely satisfiable) right now and without any problems ... they
are very happy with it.

I have developed all kind of Java applications and I have never found
any "Java GUI bug have catastrophic problems with handling sockets
in multiple threads" and have used threads in Java thoroughly ... you
can download my implementation of the classic "Santa Claus" concurrency
problem from:

http://se.inf.ethz.ch/teaching/ss2005/0268/exercises/santa_claus_giovanni.zip

My point is that any technology can be used badly ... Java Swing is no
exception.
But I tell you, implementing a GUI with Swing using (hopefully) the right
RAD
tool e.g. Java Forte Community; is by far a much better approach than
many counterparts e.g. MFC, Delphi:

- Swing has an excellent design, uses extensively the MVC Design Pattern
that positively affects the quality of the source (e.g. maintainability).
- Very complex GUI's can be developed really really quickly either with
or without tools, I am used to the Forte Community Edition. Swing really
boost productivity.
- It is a perfect balance of good design, quick prototyping and development
of GUI's. Most other alternatives completely lack one or the other e.g.
MFC
and Delphi.
- I have extensively used MFC and Swing and Swing makes your life much
easier
creating your own custom components. With MFC you would many times die
on the way; unless you read one by one the thousands of articles of Paul
DiLascia
who is I think the guru in programming Windows using C++.

As quick example think about the notorious Grid Control: if you need a
Windows
native control you will end up almost for sure buying one, or in a hell
of an API for
the bundled MS ActiveX control. Swing has the gorgeously designed JTable
were
you can seamlessly implement virtually whatever Grid functionality you
like.

- Swing performance problems? only if used badly and for really extreme
cases can be
used some tool like e.g. http://www.excelsior-usa.com/jet.html to get
your
code native instead of interpreted.
- Additional known benefits: multiplatform, can be run standalone or
web-based (applets),
pluggable L&F, vast properly designed libraries to reuse from, etc.

Best Regards,
Giovanni

 

[Bob]

Replacing Microsoft with micro$oft doesn't disguise the fact you're well
and truly on their side (if not working for them), and probably always
have been.

In fact, I can see the MS marketing meeting now:

"Yeah, yeah, go with that dollar-sign spelling. Smells of money!"

And a quote without a citation is worth less than opinion.

 

[Tjerk Wolterink]

Too right.

I am currently maintaining a set of tools, some written in MSVC and some in
Java. From time to time I get questions about GUI nasties to which the only
answer, after much research, turns out to be "because you told me to write
that one in Java, and that's what Java does".

nope, ever used a cool look&feel in java... ... problably you didnt
those look&feels just look better then those of microsoft.
and they are portable

Plus if you want

(a) Swing, and:
(b) sockets

to work you're just a teensy bit stuck, because all sufficiently late
versions of the JRE have a bug which causes the GUI to crash on XP

ive seen several application that use sockets in java, and they all work.
if you have a bug report it.

(sometimes, depending on the theme the user has selected), and all versions
of the JRE which are early enough not to have this GUI bug have catastrophic
problems with handling sockets in multiple threads.

maybe you should read a tutorial on using threads in swing.

swing is a gui toolkit that will survive every step in the windows evelutions,
just bevause it is very well designed. And good designed software last longer.

 

[Nigel Wade]

Finally, Oh Finally, someone from the real world !!.
(ect ect)

Too right.
[nsip]

Plus if you want

(a) Swing, and:
(b) sockets

to work you're just a teensy bit stuck, because all sufficiently late
versions of the JRE have a bug which causes the GUI to crash on XP
(sometimes, depending on the theme the user has selected), and all versions
of the JRE which are early enough not to have this GUI bug have catastrophic
problems with handling sockets in multiple threads.

Please supply some supporting evidence for this.

My applets use Swing and make very, very heavy use of sockets in threads.
They don't crash on XP (we have a display system with 6 copies of the
applet running all the time).

 

[.]

Here's a snippet I took of a Java SWING developers blog:

<snip>
You try telling your users that they need to upgrade to >2Gb of memory
when all they want to run is 5 or so Java GUIs of only moderate
complexity. </p> Now I'm sure these GUI could have been better written
so as not to be resource hogs, but they weren't. Which leads me neatly
onto the other problem I have. Swing is all very nice and obviously can
work very well, but in practice there doesn't seem to be many developers
who can do Swing well and quickly. They also aren't cheap to hire. </snip>

Finally, Oh Finally, someone from the real world !!. It makes me want to
cry with joy when I finally come accross a developer who has some
business acumen as well as technical savvy. Most developers are complete
morons when it comes to what drives business.

If my opinion is worth listening to then I want people to know who I am.
If I have to post a message anonymously then I obviously don't have the
conviction to stand up for what I believe.

This message is not for the original poster. I expect that they are not
reading this. If they are that speaks volumes; they claim to be leaving us
behind but they still hang around to read what we have to say? Please, if
we really are the morons he claims we are then he should have moved on.

I'm smart enough to know that every debate like this boils down to one
thing. There is no one technology that does it all. Which technology
someone ultimately chooses depends on what they need and what limitations
will not affect them. I am not pro Java. I write code in C, C++, Java,
assembly language, VB, JavaScript, etc. whatever meets the requirements of
the project. Portability is a big concern for my company. We support far
more UNIX platforms then we do Windows. Our big customers are running AIX,
HP-UX or Solaris. We make a lot of money from Windows customers and have
no intention of dropping them but we can exceed their expectations using
Java.

Everyone whose opinion I value seem to agree that the answer to, "What is

We are currently about to roll out version 1.0 of our commercial product
- built from new (so I had a choice over what technology/language to use
at the frontend), after several months of deliberating and due
diligence, I have come to the conclusion (as much as it hurts me), that
90% if not more of our clients will be running Windoze. I must be mad to
put my company at a disadvantage (because technically, I am in the
Java/Linux camp). It would be completely insane for me to go to the
market with a front end that is not ready for prime time.

Swing sucks but they are technical "in the Java/Linux camp." Again, says a
lot about whether or not I should value their opinion.

The fact is that we are all told and know in theory that we should not
judge a book by its cover - but what do we do the first thing we some
beautiful person walk past us (even though we may know that they may be
a "bitch" - in terms of personality). This is why plastic surgery is so
much in vogue at the moment - because looks *Do* make a difference
morons (pull your head out of your techie arses).

How much does it cost me to look at a beautiful woman and think, "She
looks hot." How much does it cost me to buy a software package for my
company because the GUI looks good? A smart business person will evaluate
the entire package. This is a horrible analogy.

Its sad - SWING has a lot of potential, but its still not ready for
prime time. Business people like me who have to make desicions and
compete on the desktop (almost implicitly, Windoze), will inevitably opt
for a Micro$oft solution - because although we may not love it at heart,
we must give it its due props - it gets the job done quicker and better
(as far as the end user is concerned) than SWING (incidentally or QT or
any other GUI frameowrk on Windows). Mr Gates did not get to be a
billionaire by not understanding how to "tie" people to his OS. He's got
a good thing going and he will fight tooth and nail to preserve his
territory (Who wouldn't). I mean we still have to put up with half-assed
releases from Micro$oft, and then contend with several dozen or so
"patches" afterwords, but hey what you gonna do? - it's all we've got at
the moment - and it does er, the job anyway..

If your market is mainly Windows customers then you would be stupid to
pick a technology whose main advantage is portability. Pick the right tool
for the job. I'm not going to use a pick-up truck to be a taxi and I'm not
going to use a town car to haul bricks.

I would at this time like to point out that my wife, who is not at all
technology savvy, was asking me why some web sites you uses are horrible
and others are not. She wondered if it had something to do with the .asp
ending in the URLs. I asked her what she meant. She noticed that some
sites had addresses ending in .html, others with .asp and others there was
no pattern. The .html sites where kind of plain. The .asp sites looked as
good as the other sites but they crashed all the time. I asked her for
specific site names. All the sites she really likes that never crash are
J2EE. The e-commerce sites she will never spend money on are the .asp
sites. She doesn't trust them to work properly. She worries it will take
her money and crash before it processes her order.

In the mean time, what does the Java lobby do? - instead of
consolidating its efforts to delivering a killer blow, its got its head
far up its arse, and its split with infighting between SWING and SWT,
completely oblivious of a real threat in the desktop war,advancing from
a blindspot : Macromedia Flash.

Well for me, I haven't got the inclination or the time for these "geeky"
battles. I want to make money - and as far as I know, that goal is
reached by delivering a feature rich and responsive (read blisteringly
fast) application that has a shallow learning curve (i.e. PLF) to the
client. That unfortunately, spells Micoro$oft. You in the Java camp can
keep playing with your new SWING gadget - for me, I'm off to make some
money in the real world.

If there was no money to be made in HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Linux, etc. then
everyone would be in Microsoft right now.

Me, I like computers and programming. I've been doing it since before Bill
Gates formed Microsoft. I have no preference to any language or operating
system. Talk to anyone in finance and they will tell you it is unwise to
put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify.

So long suckers ...!

Good luck. Although there is still plenty of money to be made out there so
you don't really need it.

 

[steve]

Here's a snippet I took of a Java SWING developers blog:

<SSSSSSSSNNNNNIIIIPPPPPP>

TTTROL

 

[lqualig]

I would at this time like to point out that my wife,

who is not at all technology savvy,

So your wife is not technically savvy. Okay, so let's go on.

The .html sites where kind of plain.
The .asp sites looked as good as the
other sites but they crashed all the time.

Really. Microsoft.com, eBay.com, Intel.com and others run IIS/ASP. They
seem to work just fine. What are these sites that "crashed" and how was
she able to come to this conclusion?

I asked her for specific site names.

Please do share the names of these sites that "crashed all the time."

All the sites she really likes that never crash are J2EE.

For someone who is not "technically savvy" she seems to have a talent
for spotting a J2EE site. How exactly does one identify a site as being
J2EE? Since I have yet to ever see a url that ends with "J2EE" how was
a non-technically savvy person like your wife able to figure this out?

The e-commerce sites she will never spend money
on are the .asp sites. She doesn't trust them to work
properly. She worries it will take her money and crash
before it processes her order.

I'd love to see a list of these .ASP sites that keep crashing. I don't
expect to get one though because you know and I know that this is all a
bunch of BS.

 

[Nick Malik [Microsoft]]

Troll posts like these are not welcome on any NG, regardless of which
platform they slam.

Saying unconstructive things in a negative manner will not produce a
positive result. Doing it anonymously shows how little you care about
either community.

OP: If by this message, you are stating that you will be moving over to the
..Net platform, I encourage you to pick up a book on manners _before_ you
make the transition. Any request for assistance on a NG that carries your
attitude will not produce a lot of favorable responses.

--
--- Nick Malik [Microsoft]
MCSD, CFPS, Certified Scrummaster
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this forum are my own, and not
representative of my employer.
I do not answer questions on behalf of my employer. I'm just a
programmer helping programmers.
--

 

[C-Services Holland b.v.]

Troll posts like these are not welcome on any NG, regardless of which
platform they slam.

ofcourse it helps that you quoted the ENTIRE troll post

 

[Thomas Weidenfeller]

ofcourse it helps that you quoted the ENTIRE troll post

I think it helps to compare the headers and contents of

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&output=gplain
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&output=gplain
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&output=gplain
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&output=gplain

to get an idea about that particular troll. Especially, when taking the
timing into account.

'Followup-To' set a group which I don't read ))

/Thomas

 

[.]

So your wife is not technically savvy. Okay, so let's go on.


Really. Microsoft.com, eBay.com, Intel.com and others run IIS/ASP. They
seem to work just fine.

Microsoft, eBay and Intel run IIS/ASP. These are all sites typically
frequented by technically savvy people. My wife would never be found on
Microsoft or Intel. She has been on eBay but oddly enough, she is selling
her wedding dress and it never occurred to post it on eBay. In other
words, these are all sites she doesn't like going to and only goes there
if she absolutely has to.

I find that technical savvy people tend to intuitively know how to
navigate a web site. The people who test the sites tend to be technically
savvy and therefore don't find the bugs someone like my wife will find.

What are these sites that "crashed" and how was she able to come to this
conclusion?

See below for a list of sites. How was she able to find to what
conclusion? If you mean the conclusion that they were all IIS web sites
then the answer is that she did not. She asked me why some sites crash and
others do not. Oddly enough, I tried to show her what not to do to avoid
the crash. That is just the way I think. I'm always looking for a
work-around. My wife's attitude is, "I'll just not use that web site." She
does not feel she should adapt to the web site.

Please do share the names of these sites that "crashed all the time."

Didn't memorize them. She knows I work on eCommerce related software. She
wanted to know why some of the sites she used crashed and how she could
get around it. I asked her to show me the sites.

For someone who is not "technically savvy" she seems to have a talent
for spotting a J2EE site. How exactly does one identify a site as being
J2EE? Since I have yet to ever see a url that ends with "J2EE" how was
a non-technically savvy person like your wife able to figure this out?

She did not. She showed me sites and asked what the difference was. All
the sites that had URLs ending in .jsp she liked and never had a crash.
All the sites with URLs ending in .asp crashed. There was one site that
had URLs ending in .cfm. *I* noted that cfm is ColdFusion. ColdFusion
supports JRun, WebSphere and WebLogic servers. Therefore it is J2EE.

I've worked with IIS, WebSphere, WebLogic, Oracle AS, JBoss, Tomcat, Sun
Java Systems (aka iPlanet and Sun One), ATG Dynamo and a few others. If
you know what you are looking for it is easy to figure out what systems
are using IIS and which are using J2EE.

I'd love to see a list of these .ASP sites that keep crashing. I don't
expect to get one though because you know and I know that this is all a
bunch of BS.

The sites she liked (that I can remember):

http://www.bluefly.com
http://www.jcrew.com
http://bluenile.ca

I cannot remember the site that had URLs ending with .cfm. Sites that
crash on her:

http://www.bluenile.com
http://members.ucconline.com

The last site is a member only site so you will not be able to get on
there to check it out. My wife will use the site to view the catalog but
we drive to the showroom when we want to place an order.

I will admit there is one group of IIS sites that she has been reasonably
happy with. This is automotive sites. She has been to Mini, BMW, Volvo and
a few others. The vast majority of these sites are IIS/ASP but then these
sites do not have shopping carts nor has she ever bought something from
them.

There was one site I was not able to determine what technology they were
using:

http://melochemonnex.com.

I was able to determine that http://www.omniture.com created the web site
for Meloche Monnex and poking around Omniture I found a few screens that
said something went wrong and a message is being sent to technical
support. Oddly enough, you helped me determine that Omniture uses IIS/ASP.
They list eBay as a custom development site they worked on.

 

[lqualig]

My point is that some of the busiest ecommerce sites in the world (
such as eBay.com and Dell.com ) are able to successfully run IIS/ASP to
process BILLIONS of dollars worth of transactions each month.

Any web-problems that your wife encountered are not likely to be the
result of IIS/ASP being inadequate for the job. It's more likely that
sites like "members.ucconline.com" have bugs in their web-site.

 

[Bjorn Borud]

[[email protected]]
| My point is that some of the busiest ecommerce sites in the world (
| such as eBay.com and Dell.com ) are able to successfully run IIS/ASP to
| process BILLIONS of dollars worth of transactions each month.

for any sufficiently large company you may assume they'll be using
anything and everything on the market. what is externally visible
does not necessarily tell the whole story.

-Bjørn

 

[Tris Orendorff]

[[email protected]]
| My point is that some of the busiest ecommerce sites in the world (
| such as eBay.com and Dell.com ) are able to successfully run IIS/ASP to
| process BILLIONS of dollars worth of transactions each month.

for any sufficiently large company you may assume they'll be using
anything and everything on the market. what is externally visible
does not necessarily tell the whole story.

-Bjørn

Yes, but it does show what they trust to be on the front lines of the battlefield.

--

Sincerely,

Tris Orendorff
[Two antennae meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception
was excellent.]

 

[Bjorn Borud]

[Tris Orendorff <[email protected]>]
|
| Yes, but it does show what they trust to be on the front lines of
| the battlefield.

still, I wouldn't read too much into it because there are a lot of
factors that contribute to decide these choices and they aren't always
about what is absolutely the best XYZ, but what works with some other
infrastructural component or what you can get the cheapest/best/most
developers/consultants/operations-engineers for.

-Bjørn

 

[Bjorn Borud]

[Tris Orendorff <[email protected]>]
|
| Yes, but it does show what they trust to be on the front lines of
| the battlefield.

still, I wouldn't read too much into it because there are a lot of
factors that contribute to decide these technology choices and they
aren't always about what is absolutely the best XYZ, but what works
with some other infrastructural component or what you can get the
cheapest/best/most developers/consultants/operations-engineers for.

-Bjørn

 

[lqualig]

still, I wouldn't read too much into it because there are

a lot of factors that contribute to decide these choices
and they aren't always about what is absolutely the best XYZ...

That's because there are no absolutes. There is no database that is
"absolutely" the best. That's why DB2, Oracle, SqlServer, Teradata,
Informix and others exist. Same with OS's, web-servers, etc.

The choice is made on what is the "overall best" solution. Evidently
when it comes to high volume ecommerce web-sites Windows based systems
are preferred as the overall best solution.


Note - eBay does more unit and dollar volume than any other ecommerce
site in the world.