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Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

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Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#81

Post by dangerboysteve »

vvanders wrote: post #70
rootlocus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). Because "god forbid" anyone use technologies associated with java? FUD at its finest. > Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. I just use IntelliJ IDEA. It's ten times faster and ten times more powerful than Visual Studio Code. And it's written with…

As someone who spends all day in IntelliJ there's no way it's 10x as fast, hell for me it's flipped the other direction. VSCode is easily 10x faster than IntelliJ. If I'm writing Java I'll happily use IntelliJ but anything else it's VSCode or vim.

Are you running stock or loaded with plugins ?

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#82

Post by boondaburrah »

stouset wrote: post #74
rootlocus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). Because "god forbid" anyone use technologies associated with java? FUD at its finest. > Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. I just use IntelliJ IDEA. It's ten times faster and ten times more powerful than Visual Studio Code. And it's written with…

IntelliJ faster than VS Code? I don’t think anyone who’s used both products could make such a claim with a straight face. I joke with my coworkers that I know they’ve fired up IDEA because I can hear it. Whenever it’s on, their fans are dialed up to full blast.

I'm gonna make such a claim with a straight face. I don't know if it's VSCode's vim emulation or what, but on every platform I've tried it on IntelliJ beats it, while VSCode is busy catching up to where my cursor is still after chaining like 2 vim commands.

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#83

Post by boondaburrah »

revelation wrote: post #79
boondaburrah wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Java applications work ludicrously well. They're not slow, and they really do run on anything. I'm straight up double-clicking .jar files on Mac and Windows without any problems (on linux double click is kinda a myth so I just "java -jar" it). There are good Look&Feel jars for swing. I just wish Swing itself didn't feel like enterprise programming. Java requires me to be so verbose it feels like I'm doing Web…

They don't seem to like double-click on the Linux Desktop. AppImage? Yeah, just go to the console, make it executable , then run it from there.

I think freedesktop made some standard for this, but I'm afraid it's making .desktop files that are just .INIs with the console commands to run. XDG is a weird place.

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#84

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

deedubaya wrote: post #16

Yeah, you just have to have Java installed on whatever system you're running the app on. From a development perspective (or anyone who has done end-user support of a desktop app) this is an absolute non-starter. "Install this runtime, then you can install this app. Oh and that auto updater that is atrocious? You can thank us for having it. Thanks for being a loyal customer!"

Or you could just bundle the runtime with the application, you know, like Electron does.

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#85

Post by modzu »

rootlocus wrote: post #59
scrollaway wrote: post #18

Don't say no to Electron just yet. And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). You know what Electron has brought us? It's brought the Linux desktop reliable feature parity with other platforms. Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. Discord, another fantastic Electron app, is functionally iden…

> And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). Because "god forbid" anyone use technologies associated with java? FUD at its finest. > Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. I just use IntelliJ IDEA. It's ten times faster and ten times more powerful than Visual Studio Code. And it's written with…

+1 for intelliJ, or anything jetbrains. vscode gets a lot of hype but for serious development its still a toy. that said, as far as vscode proving that electron apps can be done very well, i do agree

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#86

Post by revelation »

maxxxxx wrote: post #48
billyjobob wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javafx includes a packager tool which creates a native application with the runtime bundled inside. There is nothing to install.

.NET could use that.

.NET Core can do that:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/deplo...

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#87

Post by amcca029 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #60
scrollaway wrote: post #18

Don't say no to Electron just yet. And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). You know what Electron has brought us? It's brought the Linux desktop reliable feature parity with other platforms. Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. Discord, another fantastic Electron app, is functionally iden…

As someone who has written desktop JavaFX apps and web apps, I don't think you know what you're talking about. I can tell because you talked about the web's "fantastic tooling and iteration speed". That's a bit of a giveaway - I'm willing to bet you've never written a JavaFX app in your life. JavaFX apps work just fine on Linux. Not even fine, they work well. I know because I've written them and tested them on Linux.…

> but with none of the advantages like great tooling, great languages, UI builders and so on.

Its funny you say this while using java

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#88

Post by vikingcaffiene »

rootlocus wrote: post #67
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #55

Ugh this just reads like an old Java developer pissed off at people not using his tool of choice. His snide remark about JavaScript just tells me that he has an outdated view of the language. JS is weird yes. JS has problems yes. But the author is promoting friggin JAVA as the alternative?? Phfft! There are reasons to pick your tools. Sometimes speed of development and being able to use your pool of developers existi…

> JS is weird yes. JS has problems yes. But the author is promoting friggin JAVA as the alternative? As a language, I find java is much better designed than Java Script.

Thats a totally valid opinion but its just that: an opinion. Personally I find Java overly verbose and bloated. I'd use it if it was the right too for the job though. Just depends on what you are doing.

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#89

Post by kodablah »

scrollaway wrote: post #18

Don't say no to Electron just yet. And if you do, jesus, there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt). You know what Electron has brought us? It's brought the Linux desktop reliable feature parity with other platforms. Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron. Discord, another fantastic Electron app, is functionally iden…

> there's better alternatives than JavaFX (use Qt).

I've recently written a decent-size Qt app (QtWidgets, not QML) and the problem is the language. C++ leaves a lot to be desired especially coming from higher level languages. If you look around at language bindings, the only quality one I can find is Python and I want to avoid that too (I don't want to build a large app in a dynamic lang). Couldn't use Go, I needed MSVC to interoperate. Rust bindings had drawbacks or were incomplete. Etc. (I probably need to revisit D's Qt binding)

I just want a full-featured (i.e. not QML) widget framework in Rust, Go, D, or some other high-level non-VM cross-platform language. I'd even take C bindings because we can work from there. And I want the widgets to appear native. C# + WinForms would be great if it worked great on non-Windows and was easy to interoperate with third party C-level widgets. WxWidgets is C++ or dyn lang (though there was a C binding maintained by Haskell devs IIRC), Gtk doesn't look very native, etc.

Widget-based desktop development will continue to lose to these alternatives while there is not a good widget library on a good sans-baggage language.

Edit: Just saw https://github.com/christolliday/limn (https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/73w227/limn_gui_libra...) ...a good start!

Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app

#90

Post by boondaburrah »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #84
deedubaya wrote: post #16

Yeah, you just have to have Java installed on whatever system you're running the app on. From a development perspective (or anyone who has done end-user support of a desktop app) this is an absolute non-starter. "Install this runtime, then you can install this app. Oh and that auto updater that is atrocious? You can thank us for having it. Thanks for being a loyal customer!"

Or you could just bundle the runtime with the application, you know, like Electron does.

This is one of the many reasons I don't like electron (the apps become /massive/ and I can't update electron separately from the app), but I recognise I'm not the target market.
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