I wasn't going to waste any time responding to Phil's comments since I'm used to his attitude, but since Ehsan responded, I will now.
> 1. It was *slow*. It was so slow to even start the app that made it > irritating even for usual testing, let alone for using it for > real jobs. It > could've been me doing something silly, but I don't think so, > since it took > about at least 5 seconds to start a hello world app (I'm not exaggerating. > Five real seconds for starting a hello world app!) And if I > tried a GUI app > with all the bells and whistles, a startup delay of between 10 and 20 > seconds was quite expected. Boohoo. 10 seconds? When was the last time Word started up in under 10 seconds on any machine with less then 2 Gb RAM? It's the operational speed ONCE RUNNING that is important, not the startup time really. It's a small price to pay for the privilege of not having to port (recompile) the code to each platform every time you make a change. > > 2. The apps looked so dumb. OK, I don't want to talk about its > purple and > gray color theme, but at least its layout design which did not give the > pixel level control I enjoyed in other languages I used back then > (VB) made > me crazy. It drove me mad too to begin with, and in fact you CAN avoid the layout managers and position everything manually. But eventually you'll realise that doing so is SO internationalisation-unfriendly, since the programmer choosing sizes (unless he or she chooses way too big just to make sure everything will fit, also making it look ugly) won't be the right size for all languages. Once you realise the power of layout managers, you won't look back; just the same as I didn't regret learning C++ / MFC when I thought it was pants. It's part of the learning curve of Java, just like learning to use std:: methods will be part of the learning curve for me with C++. You can't expect to get everything down pat the first week... that's arrogance. You'll also find the event model frustrating, not being able to force a repaint of something effectively when you want; you simply have to break the old habits and learn the ones provided, since they ARE powerful when used correctly. For example, in Java when you run some lengthy code from a button press, the button will appear to remain stuck in until the routine returns on your first 100 attempts. Eventually you will find out that by using a special technique provided in SwingUtilities, this can be avoided; you can schedule that lengthy code to run as soon as the UI has completed redrawing itself, i.e., the event queue is empty. > > Things have changed since then, probably. For example, it's the > first time > I head about LAF. But I still have a very bad history of Java in > mind, and > yet, on the rare occasions that I see a web page with a Java applet in it, > and I have a JVM installed, I see that at least the sluggish > speed has been > happily inherited with the new versions. Of course it's slower - its interpreted - what did you expect? It's a trade-off: see if you can get your C++ program working from a web page under any respectable browser (IE, NS, Opera, Konqueror, etc.) without writing multiple versions of the code to do so. And I'm not talking just script functionality here: I'm talking proper programs that run within themselves. > > Also, for my current app, the fact that a huge runtime must be downloaded > and installed before the app is a bad point, since today, Windows XP and > Linux neither come with a JVM installed, the former to smash out Sun, and > the latter because Sun's JVM is not free. Some distro's ship other free > JVM's, and some even ship Sun's on the CDs, but yet it's not something we > can count on. First, almost everybody has the Sun JVM nowadays anyway. Can you imagine someone having a PC that can't view Java applets? It's just not likely. And the JRE (runtimes only) is 9 Mb, a one-off download; most people download more than that in their first week. It's just excuses. Secondly, Sun's JVM is totally free. I don't know where you got the idea from, perhaps some more MS propaganda, but go to java.sun.com and follow the links - you don't have to pay a penny. You know what? If people want to go on peddling the myths about Java, trying to pretend it's no good and this, that and the other just to avoid their comfortable little position where they think they have the answers, go right ahead: watch how little I care. I made a suggestion that I feel is valid (despite being slightly outside your requested conditions), and I stand by it. People can take it or leave it. I'm moving on... -- Jason Teagle [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ msvc mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] See http://beginthread.com/mailman/listinfo/msvc_beginthread.com for subscription changes, and list archive.
