The biggest reason for the decline and fall of Java on the desktop is that better alternatives came up that succeeded. Somewhat ironic that Java on the desktop failed, but JavaScript has been wildly successful (despite the handwringing about Electron on HN).
The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
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Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#192Java is a great language. But it failed to become the universal "write-once" VM that everyone dreamed of in the 90's. Instead, the web browser did that. So there's really no reason to bother with native Java development anymore when browsers can do everything.
Java is a great idea, but the language is miserable. From the nullable concerns to the failed object model to the horrific runtime on runtime Spring (DI) monstrosity. Testing in Java is painful enough to signal that Java has a kong way to go. Statics ensure you can have pure functions but Java testing all but eschews their usage without complex setups. Booting up Spring in tests just to run methods that depend on opaque interactions is considered cursory.
A generix UI/UX (OS) model is the most complex and difficult type of software that exists. Games are hard, but not in the sane league. There is no Java OS because the language is insufficient, which is to say, it is suitable enoigh for other things, but I wouldnt say its great.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#193As a C# developer I remember the first time I developed a GUI java application. In C# you have a code-behind file with your own code and event handlers, and a "designer file" with the generated code to set-up the GUI itself. Then I used Netbeans for a Java app, and the code file contained weird sections of artificially not editable code, and event handlers were so much more complex and cumbersome - with inner classes…
While Java was designed to be multi-platform, C# was designed specifically to create software that could run only on Microsoft platforms. Any advantage provided by C# is negated by tying your work to a platform that could be abandoned by MS as they did to Visual Basic.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#194My desktop text editor[1] is written using JavaFX and leans on Warp Packer[2] to create installer-free, multi-platform executable binaries (without jlink). A user contributed a new dark theme[3], which blends nicely with the desktop.
The JavaFX-based WebView (an HTML rendering component) is lauded, but has no direct API to control the scroll position and is itself a memory hog. Scrolling must be handled through JavaScript, and that indirection is as unwieldy as you can probably imagine. FlyingSaucer is a workable alternative to WebView, but comes with numerous technical issues that rear themselves when embedding a Swing widget inside a JavaFX application---as I discovered during development.
Were I to start from scratch, I would definitely seek out alternative cross-platform programming languages for desktop application development. The JavaFX event-based model is top-notch, but there are too many technical gremlins to make implementation a smooth ride. (Such as improper handling of Alt+Tab, which leaves focus on the menu bar when returning to the application[4].)
[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite
[2]: https://github.com/dgiagio/warp
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also Project Zomboid. Which doesn't really come close to Minecraft, but it's also developed in Java with a Lua engine on top. Why? Well, I have absolutely no clue...
Heh, thanks for bringing that to my attention; based on the video alone, I think that'd be right up my alley ( linky-linky: https://www.gog.com/game/project_zomboid and it's on Steam, too, if you're into that ) > Why? From the GOG page: Works on: Windows (10, 11), Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04), Mac OS X (10.9.0+) is almost certainly "why," and I'd guess the lua part is because it seems to be the lingua franca of…
Lua is very common - the OpenComputers mod for Minecraft exposes a Lua machine.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it not a desktop app? Millions play it on their desktop.
Still, not really in the sense of the article - he's talking about desktop apps like word processors or email clients: Minecraft's GUI is just a big canvas that the 3D renderer renders into. It's not using any windowing components - IIRC, even the menu and buttons were custom.
Minecraft can pop up GUI windows but even mods rarely do it.
Running a server without nogui gets a window also.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#197Is there any data that confirms the decline of Java on the desktop?
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#198I think Java had a bad reputation on desktop for a long time. Every application I remember using back in the day was extremely sluggish, felt like a skinwalker with regards to UI, and hogged memory.
Wasn't that bittorrent client early mid-2000s with the blue frog logo written in Java? I think I remember the author back then saying something like, "it's just a project I started to try out [some new java gui library]". I don't seem to remember speed issues using it.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#199Nice to see that Java works pretty well for indie games these days -it's a more pleasant language & ecosystem to work with than C++, and you don't need to deal with Unity's bullshit. Slay The Spire and Mindustry were written in it.
Re: The decline and fall of Java on the desktop
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lombok is indeed a band-aid that replaces IDE-autogenerated code, which in turn is a band-aid for language design choices on the one hand (e.g. equals and hashcode), and accepted Best Practices in Java world like setters/getters everywhere; for the latter, you can either do public final fields, just use public fields until you need an accessor method (java's refactorings are great), or on the other hand add language…
Scala definitely has its irritations but I’ve grown to accept it. It has enough cool features to justify its existence. I’ve not used kotlin but people I respect say it’s great, maybe that’s better than Scala.
IME Kotlin is the worst of both worlds. It's like they took every cool one-liner example from Scala and said "see, you don't need a whole functional language to do that, we can just add this piece of syntax sugar and you can do the same thing while keeping that Java feel", but once you've done that a half-dozen times you end up with a language that's actually even more complicated since it doesn't have the underlying consistent core that Scala does.