Nah. Scala fans are just really, _really_ loud. I'm reminded of what a
friend once told me 3 years ago, when the discussion came up about
what he'd buy for a new notebook.

"I'd buy a mac, except evidently, if I do, I turn into a jackass".

I'm not sure if anyone still remembers, or even if this was just an
effect that was local to my social circle, but back then macs weren't
particularly popular, yet, and those who did have them would go on and
on and on about how everyone else was clearly missing out.

At any rate, one of my let's-not-learn-scala arguments at this point
is that evidently it would turn me into an even bigger jackass :P

>From personal experience on ##java on freenode, where I routinely
advise folks new to swing to switch to either web development
(because, really, what swing GUI can you not at least write as HTML
GUI, and which swing GUIs are even nicer to write as HTML GUI), or to
switch to JavaFX.

The usual response is half a flamewar from the other old farts, and
generally the newbie just doesn't feel like switching, not
understanding the arguments or engaging in what I believe is
deflecting behaviour (they don't want to go to JavaFX for some unknown
reason, probably even unknown to themselves, but because the mind
hates to be seen as being a slave to whims, it makes up an irrelevant
reason for its opinion - in the case of JavaFX, usually some spiel
about it not being 'proven' yet, or 'too new'). I find this a real
shame, as JavaFX is IMO vastly simpler to learn and work with than
swing, and the end result is far more flexible. However, JavaFX's
problem definitely does not appear to be a technical one, but a
marketing one. Parroting Joe's as far as I can tell correct statement
that it doesn't look like Snoracle is going to pour many resources
into swing from this point sometimes helps, but more often than not,
it doesn't.

FWIW, I don't think JavaFX is relevant either. The world is moving to
either (A) the web, i.e. vanilla HTML5, which is guaranteed to run
everywhere, or (B) to an extremely local app, i.e. an app developed
for a very specific platform, such as an iPhone app. JavaFX is good in
neither.

There's certainly a niche in the internal usage at big corporations
market, but I don't care too much about it. Still, there's quite a
steep "But I didn't get to get wined and dined by some sales man, so
it must suck" gradient to fight against in that regard. Maybe if
Oracle starts peddling it with the rest of their business offerings,
it can make an inroad there, but right now Oracle is not in the best
of positions to start expanding in that area due to the lawsuit.

A real shame if JavaFX would remain stuck where it is. If one must
make a GUI built on top of a cross-platform VM, in my opinion JavaFX
is clearly by miles the best technology to do this in.

On Aug 31, 3:45 am, JamesJ <[email protected]> wrote:
> I find it amazing that any email comparing Java to Scala erupts with
> comments, while there has been a positive dearth of opinions and discussion
> on JavaFX.  I am tempted to conclude that Scala is indeed a very important
> movement, judging on the spectrum and intensity of the discussion pro and
> con.  I really haven't seen anything even close for JavaFX.  In one of the
> last podcasts I think I heard Joe say something about preferring JavaFX for
> some problem domains, and how Java Swing's days are numbered.  This did not
> draw even a whisper of a comment from the list.
>
> Is JavaFX so young that no one is actually using it?  Anyone love it or hate
> it?  Anyone?
>
> I have used it a bit.  I love the concept, but hate the rough edges.  My
> pet peeve has to be the lack of support for annotations and generics.  The
> story around JavaFX is always that you can leverage all of the Java libs.
>  How many modern libs don't use annotations or generics in the interface?

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