Linked by Andy Roberts on Thu 16th Jun 2005 19:50 UTC
I've been fortunate enough recently to be in contact with Steve Northover. Despite him being very busy with SWT and the forthcoming release of Eclipse, I've managed to grab some of his time to answer some of my questions. To clarify from the outset, the views expressed by Steve are his own and not those of his employer.
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I think it's a hit, and you're misinformed...
Try having a beginner use SWT/JFaces/Eclipse/etc to actually write an application and you will be stunned as to how impossible it is.
That's like asking a beginner to write a fully enabled EJB based application with web apps, xml services, and rcp clients. ... or the equivalent in .NET. Have a beginner start with basic SWT, and they'll soon find out it's not hard at all. Then add JFace. Then add the Eclipse plugin architecture.
The neat thing about SWT is that it's really very small, easy and straightforward by itself. And, if you are complaining that it doesn't give you any funtionality by itself, I've written several *large* applications in straight SWT and they're fully functional. Plus, if you're going to write SWT apps (or any GUI apps for that matter) get a good GUI builder. Eclipse VEP, Jigloo, or SWT-Designer.
While SWT certainly is miles beyond AWT, it is still mired in bad design that did not scale up beyond simple widgets at all well -- and also stymied by Java's horrible architecture and myopia when it comes to interfacing with native platforms.
The SWT forms that I've created scale quite well - plus how much scaling are you talking about? You'll reach the 'usable' desktop limits before you hit any type of technical scalability limits. Also, the whole point of Java is to be cross-platform - hence the reason it *doesn't* interface with native platforms directly.
After all these years, Sun Java still does not have transparent COM support, transparent Win32 support, transparent .NET support, etc. This lack of native platform support makes writing "nice" Java client applications ... something which will never happen.
Again, please explain. All this support you talk about is available using freely available bindings, libraries and such. Maybe it doesn't come in Java itself - but why would it? These aren't cross-platform APIs/protocols/etc.
Which makes it suited only for corporate IT worker units who are trolling away on some giant outsourced project where personal productivity and elegance does not matter.
The reason our business is using SWT is precisely because productivity matters. Using a great IDE like Eclipse, and coupling it with a great GUI builder you would be amazed at how much you can get done. ...and as far as elegance goes, you're talking to the wrong people (Java devs) ... if you want to see inelegant code go talk to the VB6 guys.
IBM is going to wake up in a few years and wonder what happened. Building a giant Titanic of a Java IDE is going to turn out badly.
IBM did wake up - they realized they needed something to compete directly with .NET and Visual Studio - and Swing didn't cut it. But, SWT does and the stuff that the Eclipse team is doing with their RCP tools is really unbelievable.
It may be big iron, but it is not strong iron.
Um ... this is software we're talking about - no iron involved.