[java] Java questions...

Hello, for 1) I would say there's a tool like Visual C++: JCreator and of course Sun's Netbeans IDE (which is more like uhmm delphi)

for 2) I wouldn't say Java or VB.net/C# I really don't know. But I do know Java could be better for large scale enterprise applications (J2EE)

for 3) I would say java is more tricky (wouldn't say difficult...) than C# (because of the wizards etc.) but in the end C# is nothing but a MS version of Java.

[Edited by - VerMan on February 24, 2006 3:24:13 PM]

UI dev for games? Almost every game I've seen has had a custom-drawn UI. The generic UI toolkits (like those found in java and C#) just don't look cool enough.

Netbeans has a "form designer" in the way of delphi. Latest builds (4.2) use the Matisse GUI builder, which is really impressive. Matisse will be the default UI designer in Netbeans 4.2.

Eclipse also has a plugin for UI design. Keep in mind that with eclipse you have a choice besides swing or AWT: the SWT.

And for games, as pinacolada stated, you'll hardly see standard components - not in "in-game" content, anyway. At least not components you can instantiate through UI apps.

Son Of Cain

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Original post by Stranger I am in User Interface design. In my Uni I am about to start a project with UI dev and they gave me the free choice of dev platform. To that end I have some questions: 1) Is there a tool like Visual Studio for Java? Is there a Winforms equivelant for Java implemented in the tool e.g. drag and drop boxes, status bars then change properties etc. 2) Market wise and job wise is Java better for UI dev in general games, applications than .NET which is my other choice? 3) Is Java easier than the C# opponent. I understand that this jas flame all over it but believe me that it is very important to receive some non flame answers.

I'd learn from a simple text editor so I can learn more rather than draw more. .NET is more in the market place simply because MS owns you. Java is easier than C# because it omits out pointers, less integration with windows, operator overloading, and so forth. Still, it's good to learn both. It depends on your project, really.

You know, I was just wondering about if there existed an interface designer... I guess I should just browse the Eclipse plugins page more often.

Not having time to read up on it now, though, what I really want is something like Glade/libglade: A GUI program that I can use to develop the interface, save the interface as an XML file, and load it with the library. Glade/libglade makes Gtk programming easy as hell.

Perhaps thinlets?

You may use this program to generate the UI for thinlets.

Son Of Cain

[ Edit: The editor link ]

Interesting. I had seen a number of other Java XML GUI classes, but none of them that I looked at (the first few Google hits) had any program to create the XML file -- they all required a manual edit of the XML file. To me, that basically defeats the purpose of such utilities.

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Original post by Strife To me, that basically defeats the purpose of such utilities.

Sure thing. And that app is not the only one available, I took it from the project's link page. And since the API is so simple, you might even want to write your own UI designer without a big effort.

Son Of Cain

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Original post by Stranger I am in User Interface design. In my Uni I am about to start a project with UI dev and they gave me the free choice of dev platform. To that end I have some questions: 1) Is there a tool like Visual Studio for Java? Is there a Winforms equivelant for Java implemented in the tool e.g. drag and drop boxes, status bars then change properties etc.

Eclipse, using the SWT library. Netbeans has a somewhat simpler visual GUI tool, but the rest of the program sucks so bad it's not worth it.

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2) Market wise and job wise is Java better for UI dev in general games, applications than .NET which is my other choice?

no

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3) Is Java easier than the C# opponent.

no

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Original post by dxFoo Java is easier than C# because it omits out pointers,

I've yet to see a stand-alone c# app use pointers. The fact that you have to take such a special effort to use them generally means that most people won't use them. On the other hand, I would like to see java interoperate with existing COM libraries with the simplicity that C# provides.

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less integration with windows,

that actually makes things easier for C# than java, as it has access to greater multimedia resources.

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operator overloading,

this is orthoganal to the idea of C# being "harder" than Java, as you are not required to use operator overloading, you could do things in the regular, no-operator-overloading way like Java.

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Original post by Son of Cain And since the API is so simple, you might even want to write your own UI designer without a big effort.

Nah, I honestly don't do enough GUIing in Java to really be bothered to do that :P

I usually just go with Gtk for my GUI apps since I use Linux anyway, and the GUI apps I build tend to be Linux-specific (and if there's really a need to port it, Gtk can be installed on other OSes anyway).

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Original post by capn_midnight Quote: Original post by dxFoo Java is easier than C# because it omits out pointers, I've yet to see a stand-alone c# app use pointers. The fact that you have to take such a special effort to use them generally means that most people won't use them. On the other hand, I would like to see java interoperate with existing COM libraries with the simplicity that C# provides.

A sidenote as an assambly programmer I could use a cite of another assembly programmer: "COM is crap". And when we talk about Java, and COM, JNI is COM compatibile.
If you'd like bigger simplicity, write your own extension to compiler and add it to the Java. I however, would like to avoid COM like plague.

Also note that not everyone in the project could be responsible, so when someone would get on operator overloading spree, YOU are doomed.

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Original post by Raghar Also note that not everyone in the project could be responsible, so when someone would get on operator overloading spree, YOU are doomed.

a common argument that lacks any evidence of ever happening.

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Original post by capn_midnight Quote: Original post by Stranger I am in User Interface design. In my Uni I am about to start a project with UI dev and they gave me the free choice of dev platform. To that end I have some questions: 1) Is there a tool like Visual Studio for Java? Is there a Winforms equivelant for Java implemented in the tool e.g. drag and drop boxes, status bars then change properties etc. Eclipse, using the SWT library. Netbeans has a somewhat simpler visual GUI tool, but the rest of the program sucks so bad it's not worth it. Quote: 2) Market wise and job wise is Java better for UI dev in general games, applications than .NET which is my other choice? no Quote: 3) Is Java easier than the C# opponent. no

Is that kind of like all of the evidence you provided?

Those were perfectly acceptable answers. The last two questions were really kind of silly, to be honest, so a simple "yes" or "no" answer was really all that was necessary (and anyone who would've answered "yes" would have been wrong, anyway).

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Original post by capn_midnight Quote: Original post by Raghar Also note that not everyone in the project could be responsible, so when someone would get on operator overloading spree, YOU are doomed. a common argument that lacks any evidence of ever happening.

There are very very many cases of this happening, if you work in mainstream IT, to the extent that no-one I know would ever bother documenting them. One of my colleagues at IBM got fired for it (along with other similar misdemeanours) on one project (nice guy, but in the end I was glad to see him go: he wrote shitty code that I eventually had to maintain >:( ). It's like: if you don't believe this stuff happens, you are so far removed from the world of programming *in that kind of professional environment* where it really does happen that no-one has the patience to try and "prove" it to you.

(for "you" above read "someone", not capn in particular...).

It's like saying "I've never seen evidence that writing a requiremetns document reduces overall development time". Those of us who do this as a matter of course will just look at you like "what planet did you just come from?" (or the more bitter and experienced will simply shrug; we've had this argument before and learnt the hard way that people too short-sighted, blinkered, or inexperienced to accept this aren't going to believe you whatever you tell them at that point).

No offence meant, Im' just trying to explain why people won't generally bother to explain these things nor "prove" them, unless they are feeling particularly generous with their time.

Shrug. Language-feature abuse is a serious problem on medium to large projects - along with other staples such as build-system abuse (seriosuly screwing around with the buildscripts so that no-one else has a hope in hell of maintaining them), and main-branch-pollution (checking in code that you know doesn't work and fudging it past the checkin-scripts!)

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Original post by Strife Nah, I honestly don't do enough GUIing in Java to really be bothered to do that :P

Takes one afternoon to do a decent one wihtout the drag-n-drop but just with sensible methods that do 90% of the work for you, if you have a decent brain and have used lots and lots of software (so have a good idea to start with how you'd like to make your GUI writing simple).

If you mail me I can dig out some of my own code from the last time I wrote a GUI lib in a day for my personal use (I've done it a number of times, but usually someone else owns the copyright (paid-for work, y'see) :( ) - on the condition that if you use it you clean up the source a bit and publish it somewhere as public-domain / BSD licensed source for everyone :).

Part of why I haven't got around to it myself is that each time I write GUI code that will deal with a certain large subset of GUI's and I'd like to put aside a week sometime to do a complete GUI toolkit.

***: when I say "complete GUI toolkit" I do *not* mean writing my own widgets or something insanely time-consuming like that: I just mean something that would let you do every layout of GUI you'd like *fast* rather than slowly and painfully. I have done all the bits at one time or another...