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Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

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Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#61

Post by ssijak »

hasenj wrote: post #30

The other day there was a post recommending the use of JavaFX. I would really like to see a non-trivial app built on JavaFX in Kotlin, with the following properties: - Does not look ugly. - Is not composed of _merely_ OEM widgets. But includes custom elements, like one would normally see on websites (and by extension, Electron apps). - Is lightweight and response, not just in terms of CPU and RAM, but in terms of use…

I made JavaFX app for my company. It is in the gambling space. Used to display jackpot related stuff, winners, current jackpots, promotions, etc. It is deployed to every betting shop (around 600 of them). It also interacts with central server and gambling machines.

I started with swing then shortly thereafter switched to JavaFX and it was a joy to use it for this usecase. Really easy to make what we needed in small amount of code and it is performing well and is really stable (runs 24h/7 without problems)

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#62

Post by sandij »

hasenj wrote: post #30

The other day there was a post recommending the use of JavaFX. I would really like to see a non-trivial app built on JavaFX in Kotlin, with the following properties: - Does not look ugly. - Is not composed of _merely_ OEM widgets. But includes custom elements, like one would normally see on websites (and by extension, Electron apps). - Is lightweight and response, not just in terms of CPU and RAM, but in terms of use…

Not sure it meets all 3 requirements, but last time I tried I was rather impressed by the Nightcode Clojure IDE built with JavaFX:

https://sekao.net/nightcode/

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#63

Post by ComputerGuru »

mberning wrote: post #12

What framework does Jetbrains use for all their tools? They honestly look and perform great on every platform that I have used them on.

"great" is subjective, my preference is for "native" and then you only have to decide what you think/feel looks good just once. JetBrains doesn't look native.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#64

Post by abiox »

justboxing wrote: post #26

Ask HN on Show HN: Why is Swing UI still so Ugly ? 2 Decades since it's introduction in 1997 ( I remember being forced to use it in a trading OMS application in 2002), Swing UI looks frozen in time, ugly as ever.

intellij is swing and it looks decent. i think it's because most people don't spend any time on appearance.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#65

Post by tincholio »

westoncb wrote: post #27
justboxing wrote: post #26

Ask HN on Show HN: Why is Swing UI still so Ugly ? 2 Decades since it's introduction in 1997 ( I remember being forced to use it in a trading OMS application in 2002), Swing UI looks frozen in time, ugly as ever.

Part of that is because Java has basically moved onto JavaFX over Swing—and partly it's because I built this specifically to resemble old Swing apps :)

I love the old "metal" look and feel. It's retro-tastic! :)

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#66

Post by captainmuon »

thejosh wrote: post #19
westoncb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the author of this—yep, I can agree with that. I'm generally baffled when I see folks complain about Electron's slowness—but that's probably 'cause I started out building Swing apps :)

Also the memory usage is killer.

Memory usage is often a bad indicator of bloat. Especially GC languages like Java and JS will just go ahead and allocate a lot of memory from the OS without using all of it all the time. If you sum the "used" memory of all apps, it will often be more than the available RAM, even though there is no swapping going on. The OS memory management is really clever nowadays.

Actually, an app not using much memory may be sacrificing performance by not using a caching opportunity.

Unfortunately, apps coordinating how much memory to best use is an unsolved problem, as far as I know.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#67

Post by westoncb »

tincholio wrote: post #65
westoncb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that is because Java has basically moved onto JavaFX over Swing—and partly it's because I built this specifically to resemble old Swing apps :)

I love the old "metal" look and feel. It's retro-tastic! :)

Yay, someone else too! :)

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#68

Post by erikbye »

hota_mazi wrote: post #48
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which do you care more about: it works, or it looks good? There's a reason Java became such a big platform for business applications and it isn't because it cared about fashion fads.

> There's a reason Java became such a big platform for business applications and it isn't because it cared about fashion fads. There's a reason why Java completely failed on the desktop: Swing. > Which do you care more about: it works, or it looks good? Both. I care about both. And you should too. But Swing developers got used to only being able to have one. At most.

Completely failed? JetBrains' IDEs seem awfully popular, and they are all Java and Swing.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#69

Post by erikbye »

crispinb wrote: post #51
jcpst wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitwig, an excellent commercial cross-platform DAW, has a UI that is written with Java.

Thanks, looks interesting. Scriptable in javascript too. I always note with irony that professionals expect to pay decent money (Bitwig is $400) for software relevant to their trade; the one exception being software pros.

Visual Studio Enterprise is $2999/year, Pro is $539. Might as well add anywhere from $400 to $1500 for the IncrediBuild license.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#70

Post by mrighele »

captainmuon wrote: post #66
thejosh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the memory usage is killer.

Memory usage is often a bad indicator of bloat. Especially GC languages like Java and JS will just go ahead and allocate a lot of memory from the OS without using all of it all the time. If you sum the "used" memory of all apps, it will often be more than the available RAM, even though there is no swapping going on. The OS memory management is really clever nowadays. Actually, an app not using much memory may be sacr…

Is it really the case ? I would expect the language to expand the size of the heap only if after a GC the amount of free memory is still below a certain threshold.
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