Popular @
Forum Controls
Spotlight Features
The Rich Engineering Heritage Behind Dependency Injection
Andrew McVeigh takes us on a tour of the rich heritage behind dependency injection, what it represents, and tells us why its here to stay.
NetBeans 6: Matisse Updates
NetBeans 6 delivers great updates to the Matisse GUI builder. Spend a few minutes with Roman Strobl and get an expert briefing on what's new and what has changed. (sponsored)
Introduction to Groovy Part 3
In this, the third and final installation of Andres' Introduction to Groovy series, you learn about how Groovy handles variable numbers of arguments, named parameters, currying, and more about Groovy operators. Including, some new operators.
Easier Custom Components with Swing Fuse
Swing Fuse (actually just Fuse), is a framework designed to make it easier to create your own custom desktop components. In this article, Daniel Spiewak shows you how to get started and provides sample source code you can download.
Benchmark Analysis: Guice vs Spring
Willam Louth shows how he uses JXInsight Probes to investigate probable performance issues with code bases that he is not familiar with. He also highlights possible pitfalls in creating a benchmark, as well as in the analysis of results.
Replies:
12 -
Pages:
1
A positive Java news story for a change
URL: Java No. 1 for mobile gaming
At 9:59 AM on Sep 26, 2006, Robert Stone wrote:
Fresh Jobs for Developers Post a job opportunity
12 replies so far (
Post your own)
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
I don't agree. Java on the desktop was never Sun's responsibility. Java is about a community, a market, a shared ecosystem. If Java on the desktop is important, we should work to make it happen and not just blame Sun.IBM has made / is making it happen with SWT / Eclipse. Others have provided Java-based rich clients, etc. There are lots of successes. There is nothing _ubiquitous_, but that is the trade-off when using the darwinian model (as opposed to the "top down" / one-true-way Microsoft model).
Peace.
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
As Cameron Purdy says above: it is not SUN's responsability.In my oppinion ... Java on the desktop lacks killer apps for end users.
Programmers and companies have concentrated on Java tools, and they rock (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ IDEA). BUT there are very few Java applications known to normal people.
On a technical level it is Swing's fault, but Swing, as light weight and portable as it is, makes sense for Java. Swing is good for Intranets and for custom tools.
But for the masses, it is the Java community that should have embraced alternatives like SWT and bindings to C++ GUI toolkits like QT and wxWidgets.
But nooo ... the Java community wants to remain pure.
Who needs that stinckin` SWT, who needs that C++ crap that's QT or wxWidgets.
And now we complain to SUN.
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
IMHO, Java is too big to be dominant in mobile platforms. It will face tough compaction from Flash, SVG and WPF/E, which are lightweight and use scalable vectors to fit diverse sizes of mobile screens.Re: A positive Java news story for a change
> I don't agree. Java on the desktop was never Sun's> responsibility. Java is about a community, a market,
> a shared ecosystem. If Java on the desktop is
> important, we should work to make it happen and not
> just blame Sun.
But Sun have been really pushing mobile Java, enough so that it seems that most mobile phones today can now run Java apps. Contrast that with the desktop capabilities which were pretty much stagnant until 1.5 when they really started improving the performance and looks. I think that Sun are now focusing more on the desktop and luckily we now have lots of very talented people leading the way
Rob
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
> IMHO, Java is too big to be dominant in mobile> platforms. It will face tough compaction from Flash,
> SVG and WPF/E, which are lightweight and use scalable
> vectors to fit diverse sizes of mobile screens.
It will be interesting to see how much of a fight Sun puts up to retain its current dominance, I read a blog by Jonathon Schwartz the other day were he was talking about how important mobile phones were - judging from this I would guess that mobile Java will remain a key area for Sun.
Heres a link to the blog: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
Rob
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
J2ME is not particularly big. It is getting more efficient and faster all the time. Also, mobile devices are becoming more powerful by the year (and have more and more memory).What can be big is the application. But that is also true of native applications. An astute developer will write his app to take advantage of available space.
The crucial criterion will be how widespread a given tool is on a class of devices. And Java doesn't come out badly there!
Ian
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
As of now, most mobile developers produce two versions of every application/game - J2ME and BREW. Then there are the SmartPhone/PDA developers who specialize in native SymbianOS, PocketPC, Linux or PalmOS applications/games. I don't see Flash or SVG getting a foot in the door in either market - they're about 5 years too late. Are you just speculating? If not, could you post some links? Thanks. Regarding J2ME's dominance, this interview is an interesting read: http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/midp/luminaries/taivalsaari/Re: A positive Java news story for a change
Oh, and J2ME supports SVG too! See JSR 226: http://wiki.svg.org/index.php?title=JSR_226Re: A positive Java news story for a change
> Contrast that with the desktop> capabilities which were pretty much stagnant until
> 1.5 when they really started improving the
> performance and looks.
I sure don't think the desktop was "stagnant until 1.5". We had a new event model, Swing, Java2D, JDIC, and webstart just to name a few, and constant performance improvements. I don't think the desktop effort by Sun has been lacking at all. In fact, I'd guess that they've put more effort into desktop than mobile over the years.
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
> BUT there are very few Java applications known> to normal people.
>
> On a technical level it is Swing's fault, but Swing,
> as light weight and portable as it is, makes sense
> for Java.
How can you blame the lack of "killer desktop apps" on Swing? No GUI toolkit is going to replace entrenched, huge desktop apps. Whether it's a web browser, an IM client, a wastebasket or whatever...you can't expect Swing or any toolkit to be so good that anyone's going to rewrite a perfectly good, working app. It would be different if any of these "killer apps" had been started from scratch within the last few years.
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
> I sure don't think the desktop was "stagnant until> 1.5". We had a new event model, Swing, Java2D, JDIC,
> and webstart just to name a few, and constant
> performance improvements. I don't think the desktop
> effort by Sun has been lacking at all. In fact, I'd
> guess that they've put more effort into desktop than
> mobile over the years.
The first 3 things in your list are harldy new though, and I can't remember which release WebStart was first included in.
I guess it is just a perception thing then - certainly to me it looks like there is now more of an attempt to push the desktop capabilities. The changes in 1.6 in particular (improved rendering pipelines, no more gray rectangle) and producing demo apps like Aerith to show just what can be done. Maybe we have Mac OSX/Windows Vista and various killer apps (iTunes) to thank for this new focus ?
Rob
Re: A positive Java news story for a change
The only realy big thing that is wrong with Swing is the lack of desktop intergration. But things are improving with things like the tray icon in Java 6 so Sun is working on it but the community can give Sun and hand.