Well short of being tossed into a time portal and popping out in 2007 I wouldn’t build a client app in Java...
But Qt has rust bindings, so that’s good to learn!
Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
31–40 of 143 posts
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, on a sliding scale of complexity, JavaFx is closer to Electron than Qt and GTK+ (especially since your options are C++, or using bindings that have varying quality and ease of use). If I was trying to sell someone who uses Electron on an alternative it'd definitely be JavaFx, maybe Qt with QML if they knew C++.
C++ in itself is pretty complex comparing to other languages
Yeah, main reason I'd only recommend Qt/QML if they were already comfortable with C++ (although Qt does a lot to help with memory management)
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#33"you can distribute it to any user on any OS and it will just work." I had to check the date on this article to see if it was from 2007 or something. Under no circumstances does java "just work", its an insane mess of java shipped with the os, being updated, and people not updating due to oracle trying to force feed crapware as part of their installers/updaters. I, for one, do not live in a world that resembles anyth…
Javafx includes a packager tool which creates a native application with the runtime bundled inside. There is nothing to install.
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#34What about C++ and SDL2 ?
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#35It's also tough to beat the developer experience that the modern JS ecosystem has brought to app development.
The Chrome dev tools alone are pretty incredible. Getting that much detail in your debug environment, paint cycles, render times, animation effects, and quick style experimentation is a huge deal.
The package ecosystem for JS is also an enormous advantage. Having access to data layer systems like Redux & the Redux dev tools, as well as any module designed to run on Node.js really helps ensure an actively developed ecosystem that abstracts more and more away from the end application developer.
Finally, I argue that performance bottlenecks are rarely an issue of the javascript. V8 is extremely fast and only getting faster. Most bottlenecks come from doing something dumb during rendering, or tying up a process reading from disk. These are issues that happen on all app platforms. The big difference is that Electron gives you to tools to effectively debug and optimize these, plus a HUGE wealth of online resources & tutorials to help new developers jankbust.
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#36I wrote an IDE using JavaFX: https://sekao.net/nightcode/ My experiences have been mostly great. As the author mentioned, the JDK comes with a nifty tool called javapackager that will generate a dmg, exe, deb, and other formats with the JRE built in. If you really do want to embed web content, it includes a WebView widget which is a fully-functional browser capable of loading local or remote content, and it even lets you communicate between the JVM and JS side using a little bridge object. So you get the benefits of both the JVM and JS ecosystem. This was particularly nice for me because I could write the some of the IDE in Clojure, and some of it in ClojureScript, and they can call each other's functions arbitrarily. Amazing stuff.
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#37> That's a world of difference from an Electron app, which typically needs 200MB just to open. This is sort of an unfair comparison - the JavaFX one is mainly smaller because it doesn't include the distribution of Java and all the libraries, which is if I recall correctly about 200 MB, while Electron commonly includes all libraries and the renderer. I will give you that the Java distribution can at least be shared by…
That comment was about RAM, not disk.
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Java updaters on Windows do bundleware anymore. I know nearly all the free Windows antivirus updaters automatically install Chrome and set it as your default browser unless you pay close attention still.
The damage is done. Thank you Oracle.
That "bundleware" (as JohnTHaller calls it) stuff was going on before Oracle. I recall being disappointed that Oracle hadn't stopped it several versions into the Oracle rebranding.
Sun did that damage.
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#39Don'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…
Qt + QML is IMO not just the currently best way, but also some kind of global optimum for me (coming from Swing, SWT and WPF/XAML). The data dependency handling is incredibly well done (it sometimes feels like using a Rx library without all the boilerplate), the handling of visual state is superb (think VisualStateManager without 4 pages of XAML).
Re: Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app
#40"you can distribute it to any user on any OS and it will just work." I had to check the date on this article to see if it was from 2007 or something. Under no circumstances does java "just work", its an insane mess of java shipped with the os, being updated, and people not updating due to oracle trying to force feed crapware as part of their installers/updaters. I, for one, do not live in a world that resembles anyth…
Javafx includes a packager tool which creates a native application with the runtime bundled inside. There is nothing to install.
Once the runtime is bundled in, what does the size of the standalone application come in at? Curious if it is close that of a bare Electron app (around 50-90 MB, depending on the platform).