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Re: Does Anyone Really Care About Desktop Java?
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Posted: Jul 17, 2008 1:32 PM
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I think the question isn't why Java failed, the question is why, despite the hassle, so many of the desktop apps I find on my machine are written (as far as I can tell) in C/C++ or (on OS X) Objective-C. They certainly aren't written in Ruby, Perl, or Smalltalk. For the most part, on Ubuntu, most aren't written in C#/Mono, either. I used a Python GUI app once (that was where I knew it was Python) but I think it was just that once.
For development--yeah, I use the Java IDEs (IDEA on OS X is pretty incredible, actually), jEdit once in awhile. I used to use SmartCVS as well, that's a nice (and useful) Swing app. Cyberduck is a Java app for OS X that uses the OS X libraries for the UI, as far as I know. Great app, though.
Bruce, take a gander at the machines you use and see what their desktop software is written in. How many Flex apps do you have installed? How many are you currently evaluating, and thinking of using full-time in place of some other app?
As far as Flex, I just associate it with a whole line of development tools aiming to put advertising on every single webpage I visited. I don't recall any websites that were using Flash, for example, where it seemed to buy me anything, outside of web video. Bruce, can you name 5 or 6 websites using Flex that are just so rocking that we're convinced it's the way of the future? I do like where parleys.com, but that's the only one I can think of.
I have downloaded some AIR apps and they were pretty nice to look at; pleasant. But I found no need to actually install them or use any of them. I'm not against it in any way; I still try out a lot of software and when I find something useful, I stick with it. At the end of the day, I want apps that help me get something done or enjoy myself.
What I found with several Java desktops apps I used was that if they were well-designed (BlogBridge is nice, SmartCVS was great, Azureus is OK but I rarely need it) then I just forgot they were written in Java. The reason why I stopped using them was not because of visual issues or performance issues but rather that they just weren't well designed for the task at hand, at least for my purposes. Omni Outliner is a good counter-example to that: it does outlines, it's simple and lets me focus on outlining and it never breaks. If an app does its job well, then I don't care what it's written in.
I think the larger point is that designing high-quality GUI apps is at least part art, and there are many, many times more junk apps written for, say, Windows, in C and C++ or even VB than ever were written in Java. Good GUI designers, people who do that well, are just hard to find; or else maybe most of them write software for OS X.
Patrick
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