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Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

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Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#31

Post by crispinb »

wuliwong wrote: post #24
Zelphyr wrote: post #3

I don't mean to knock this project because it looks interesting and I wish the developer all the best. But, why does every damn project announced have to be "lightweight"? Even the ones that are definitely not light anything.

In general I agree with you, I seems to come up a lot with javascript frameworks. But in this case, it's a pretty specific claim, right? The dev is saying that it's lighter on resources than Postman because it's built with Java and not Electron. I think it's fair even given the current overuse of "lightweight."

It might be fair if true. But is it true? In general java desktop apps that I've used have been heavy users of memory & cpu resources (I don't think any of these were JavaFX-based though).

On my system, Everest is using a lot more memory than Insomnia. Perhaps an unfair comparison as Everest is an alpha, whereas Insomnia is very polished. But I see nothing to support the claim.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#32

Post by thepumpkin1979 »

pharrington wrote: post #18
coldtea wrote: post #9

> Unlike other REST clients like Postman and Insomnia, Everest is written in Java. Thus, it is significantly lighter on resources and more responsive than the Electron-based options. A technology finally came up to make a Java desktop app look better in comparison...

JavaFX was released nine years ago. V edit: yep my reading comprehension is not on point today

I can't believe JavaFX is still alive, it's been years since Silverlight and Flash died.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#33

Post by dropofwill »

pkhagah wrote: post #20
krat0sprakhar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still use Kotlin + TornadoFx ( https://github.com/edvin/tornadofx )

Is TornadoFx supported native without JVM? AFAIK TornadoFx is just a layer around JavaFX. So, Kotlin/TornadoFx should use the same resources as Java+JavaFX.

Yeah, I think the usual approach is to ship the JVM with the app.

And last I looked it (like ScalaFX) runs against Java 8, so no Jigsaw to shrink app sizes.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#34

Post by Rebelgecko »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #11

Nice work! I was kinda expecting someone to showcase JavaFx/TornadoFx, after the daily parade of electron/JS based apps. > it is significantly lighter on resources and more responsive than the Electron-based options I tend to agree that this is lightweight than Electron etc, but are there any benchmarks to verify the actual numbers? One the side note, it's funny so see Java being touted as a `lightweight` alternative…

Unscientific, but for me Everest started a few seconds faster than Postman and used about half as much RAM. I tried to clear out preexisting state from Postman but probably didn't get 100% of it. If you already have a JVM installed, the executable is also 90% smaller

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#37

Post by vbezhenar »

coldtea wrote: post #17
vbezhenar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always laughing when I'm thinking about it. A lot of tech people complained about Java being resource-hungry. Just to get another more resource-hungry technology. It just means that those complaints are not very serious. If people like software, they'll use it.

> It just means that those complaints are not very serious. If people like software, they'll use it. Or rather, if people have no other options, they'll use whatever they are given. Besides, it's not very serious if user adoption is the criterion -- as opposed to the possibility of a better computing environment.

> Or rather, if people have no other options, they'll use whatever they are given.

I have a simple example: Discord. It's a popular voice conference application used by many gamers. I played WoW for many years and I saw voice software gamers used. It was Ventrillo, it was Raid Call, it was Team Speak. They are native programs. Discord is very recent player but it completely disrupted this ecosystem. In few years every WoW community switched to Discord. Nobody cares that it's JavaScript with React (AFAIK). But everybody likes slick interface and features.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#38

Post by geodel »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #11

Nice work! I was kinda expecting someone to showcase JavaFx/TornadoFx, after the daily parade of electron/JS based apps. > it is significantly lighter on resources and more responsive than the Electron-based options I tend to agree that this is lightweight than Electron etc, but are there any benchmarks to verify the actual numbers? One the side note, it's funny so see Java being touted as a `lightweight` alternative…

> it's funny so see Java being touted as a `lightweight` alternative to desktop apps.

Exactly my thought when I read this. Google really outbloated Java with Electron.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#39

Post by bunderbunder »

This looks nice and clean compared to some of the other tools in this vein that I've used.

That said, I've fairly recently decided that Jupyter notebooks are a better mousetrap than GUI-based tools for this kind of thing. Python's a pretty ergonomic language for this kind of thing, and having a full programming language to work with makes some testing scenarios more convenient.

Plus, you can get some nice spinoffs out of the deal. Once you get everything how you like it, you might be only an nbconvert away from having a decent suite of automated acceptance tests. Or sprinkle some markdown cells in between your tests, and now you've got executable, hackable documentation for your API. Check that into GitHub, and you've also got reasonably pretty documentation with detailed code samples that's easy to view in the repository browser.

Re: Everest: A lightweight REST API client written in JavaFX

#40

Post by rohitawate »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #11

Nice work! I was kinda expecting someone to showcase JavaFx/TornadoFx, after the daily parade of electron/JS based apps. > it is significantly lighter on resources and more responsive than the Electron-based options I tend to agree that this is lightweight than Electron etc, but are there any benchmarks to verify the actual numbers? One the side note, it's funny so see Java being touted as a `lightweight` alternative…

Yes it is lighter than the Electron-based options. Definitely a lot more than Postman which always consumes north of half a gig. Everest hovers around 250-300MB which I know is still a lot and I'm currently in the process of optimizing the internals.

And another yes, Java is not the lightest thing around. But man its much better than Electron.

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