(Note: this is going to be a bit of a polemic, "a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc.")
I just listened to JP 272 and was happy that my email about Cyberduck (http://cyberduck.ch/) was read out. I thought the Posse discussion was interesting, but wanted to hear from a larger audience. Cyberduck is an (S)FTP/S3/WebDav/etc. client which runs on OS X. It's open source, and the code base is in Java--but the UI is written with an OS X binding (I assume Cocoa, but am not sure). I assume the underlying FTP etc. libraries are all portable. For all intents and purposes, you can't tell it from any other app on OS X, from installation onwards. I think it's well-designed, stable and find the UI well-designed and well thought-out. Nowhere in the download, or installation, or even on the home page, does Cyberduck talk about being a Java app. It's just an app. It does its job well. It's easy to use. The UI designers respect the conventions of the platform they run on. When I'm using (Ubuntu) Linux at work, I miss Cyberduck--and usually use FTP from the CLI, or FileZilla--and sure, in principle it would be nicer it the whole app ran on multiple platforms. On the other hand, it's a little like TextEdit or BBEdit; if you have the ability to run them, and you like them, maybe you just feel a little sorry for those who don't have OS X to work with. But even if it would be nice that the app ran everywhere (by using a portable UI), it would be bad if in the process it caused more work for the developers, leading to a slower release process, or if the resulting UI wasn't as good as this one is. So I think what I'm saying is this: I think it's great that this team is working on a solid-quality, useful app in Java, regardless of the fact that it's not cross-platform. And I think as a community, it might help us if we stopped evaluating desktop Java apps based merely on portability and focused more on their utility, integration, and the quality of their UI. If Java and the JVM don't help us build _better_ apps _more easily_ and of _higher quality_ than the alternatives, then there is no reason to advocate them, and an app's portability really doesn't matter. FWIW, I'd be glad if someone wanted to take on the effort of writing a Swing or SWT UI for Cyberduck, and see how they fare. In fact, it would probably be a great challenge for the next JavaFX competition :). Regards Patrick --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
