Choosing Netbeans platform or Eclipse RCP

[Solerman Kaplon]

software visualization escreveu:

> SWT was the absolutely worst case of choosing to try to re-invent /
> out-invent an existing technology- java GUIs - that I ever saw come
> from a large company. This was sort of a spasm of "not invented here
> (NIH)" mentality. Of course, even the name Eclipse is well known to be
> a direct slap in Sun's face (i.e. eclipsing the Sun). Why would a
> company waste their time, money and resources taking an "attitude"
> towards another company? Where were the adults when all this was going
> down?  And what did SWT get them in the end? Anyways .. going OT
> now...
>  

A bit OT yes, but I always wanted to say this: SWT is the wrong solution
to a problem. If swing was slow, make it fast, optimize it, just like
was done in the last years, not re-invent the weel like you're doing
anything good splitting the devolopers in half.

Solerman

[Tonny Madsen]

swing_developer wrote:

SWT was the absolutely worst case of choosing to try to re-invent /
out-invent an existing technology- java GUIs - that I ever saw come
from a large company. This was sort of a spasm of "not invented here
(NIH)" mentality. Of course, even the name Eclipse is well known to be
a direct slap in Sun's face (i.e. eclipsing the Sun). Why would a
company waste their time, money and resources taking an "attitude"
towards another company? Where were the adults when all this was going
down?  And what did SWT get them in the end? Anyways .. going OT
now...

I have to disagree with you on this. Building anything serious on Java Swing at the time of Java 1.2 was simply impossible. Swing was way too slow to be usable. It a different story today, with JIT compilers and Java 6 direct use of native widgets, but in 1999 they (= OTI) made the correct choice IMHO.

Regards,
Tonny

[Tonny Madsen]

Solerman Kaplon wrote:

software visualization escreveu:
> SWT was the absolutely worst case of choosing to try to re-invent /
> out-invent an existing technology- java GUIs - that I ever saw come
> from a large company. This was sort of a spasm of "not invented here
> (NIH)" mentality. Of course, even the name Eclipse is well known to be
> a direct slap in Sun's face (i.e. eclipsing the Sun). Why would a
> company waste their time, money and resources taking an "attitude"
> towards another company? Where were the adults when all this was going
> down?  And what did SWT get them in the end? Anyways .. going OT
> now...
>  
A bit OT yes, but I always wanted to say this: SWT is the wrong solution
to a problem. If swing was slow, make it fast, optimize it, just like
was done in the last years, not re-invent the weel like you're doing
anything good splitting the devolopers in half.

Solerman

I still think that they made the correct choice: it took SUN more than 7 years to make swing a usable toolkit for application of the size of Eclipse - why should OTI use their time on this and not on the application IBM paid them to develop?

Anyway, I tried to submit a patch to SUN in 2002, and I can tell you that earned by no thanks from SUN! On the contrary. If you really want to talk about a company with an NIH complex :-(


Regards,
Tonny

[Solerman Kaplon]

Tonny Madsen escreveu:
> I still think that they made the correct choice: it took SUN more than 7
> years to make swing a usable toolkit for application of the size of Eclipse
> - why should OTI use their time on this and not on the application IBM paid
> them to develop?
>
> Anyway, I tried to submit a patch to SUN in 2002, and I can tell you that
> earned by no thanks from SUN! On the contrary. If you really want to talk
> about a company with an NIH complex :-(
>  
IBM had their own JVM, already faster than sun. Don't need to wait
anything to make patches. And Sun was always slow at anything, it is no
surprise it taken that long, they are the reference JVM, just like
things need to work, don't necessarly mean they're the ones to make it
faster. Kudos for IBM to make sun race to it thought, otherwise they
might not had gone through it.

Solerman

[swing_developer]

Well we have to agree to disagree :)

I did something a very serious, complex and successful commercial
application using Swing 1.2 in 1999, which my company sold for *real*
money to *real* companies and we had no complaints about speed or
memory.  Other people did too. So at least that part of your statement
is qualified.

I know you're not one of them, but lets recall here that  bad
programmers can do bad things to themselves if they're given enough
rope, and if there's one thing Swing absolutely does, its give you
enough rope. Now, learning to lasso things instead of hang yourself
accidentally is up to the developer.

Of course, learning to lasso is many times easier today than it was in
2000 thanks to the resources I cited in my earlier post !!

cheers!!


On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Tonny Madsen
<tonny.madsen@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>  swing_developer wrote:
>  >
>  > SWT was the absolutely worst case of choosing to try to re-invent /
>  > out-invent an existing technology- java GUIs - that I ever saw come
>  > from a large company. This was sort of a spasm of "not invented here
>  > (NIH)" mentality. Of course, even the name Eclipse is well known to be
>  > a direct slap in Sun's face (i.e. eclipsing the Sun). Why would a
>  > company waste their time, money and resources taking an "attitude"
>  > towards another company? Where were the adults when all this was going
>  > down?  And what did SWT get them in the end? Anyways .. going OT
>  > now...
>  >
>
>  I have to disagree with you on this. Building anything serious on Java Swing
>  at the time of Java 1.2 was simply impossible. Swing was way too slow to be
>  usable. It a different story today, with JIT compilers and Java 6 direct use
>  of native widgets, but in 1999 they (= OTI) made the correct choice IMHO.
>
>  Regards,
>  Tonny
>  --
>  View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Choosing-Netbeans-platform-or-Eclipse-RCP-tp16012394p16133555.html
>
>
> Sent from the Netbeans - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>

[swing_developer]

Ahh I can't believe I left this out.. in 2000-2002, I did build
Eclipse, well, in all but name, for a company I was working for, and
entirely in Swing. An application framework for their applications.
They wanted to unify their pre-existing applications into a single
framework so that they could modularize them into "suites", (a sales
thing)  and also write new modules to the same framework going
forward. When Eclipse hit the market and I understood what it was, I
thought.. "hey, I did exactly that", and I had.

I was excited about an OS project with the GoF on board, but the
reality of it was more than a little disappointing. Not only that, but
the whole SWT thing just fragmented the developer world. I think most
people don't actually chose SWT as a library, they get it when they
get Eclipse. I know there are efforts to unify them (which I read as -
make SWT work with Swing) , but unless you're working with Eclipse,
it's a solution to a problem you just don't have.

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Tonny Madsen
<tonny.madsen@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>  swing_developer wrote:
>  >
>  > SWT was the absolutely worst case of choosing to try to re-invent /
>  > out-invent an existing technology- java GUIs - that I ever saw come
>  > from a large company. This was sort of a spasm of "not invented here
>  > (NIH)" mentality. Of course, even the name Eclipse is well known to be
>  > a direct slap in Sun's face (i.e. eclipsing the Sun). Why would a
>  > company waste their time, money and resources taking an "attitude"
>  > towards another company? Where were the adults when all this was going
>  > down?  And what did SWT get them in the end? Anyways .. going OT
>  > now...
>  >
>
>  I have to disagree with you on this. Building anything serious on Java Swing
>  at the time of Java 1.2 was simply impossible. Swing was way too slow to be
>  usable. It a different story today, with JIT compilers and Java 6 direct use
>  of native widgets, but in 1999 they (= OTI) made the correct choice IMHO.
>
>  Regards,
>  Tonny
>  --
>  View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Choosing-Netbeans-platform-or-Eclipse-RCP-tp16012394p16133555.html
>
>
> Sent from the Netbeans - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>

[Tonny Madsen]

Solerman Kaplon wrote:

IBM had their own JVM, already faster than sun. Don't need to wait
anything to make patches. And Sun was always slow at anything, it is no
surprise it taken that long, they are the reference JVM, just like
things need to work, don't necessarly mean they're the ones to make it
faster. Kudos for IBM to make sun race to it thought, otherwise they
might not had gone through it.

Yes, IBM did - and do - have their own JVM, but... fixing the problems in Swing required large API changes... What would SUN have said about IBM making an incompatible version of Swing? Just think about the big fight between SUN and Microsoft in those days...

Anyway, choosing between a simple - and more and less guaranteed - solution (SWT) and a politically doubtful solution (a modified Swing), I still think IBM made the correct choose.

Regards,
Tonny

[Rick Fincher]

Hi,

I have a web app in Netbeans that will suddenly start showing a
Navigator panel with only the message "<No View Available>" in it.

Restarting Netbeans restores the Navigator panel sometimes, but not always.

Any idea if there is a way to restart or refresh the navigator?

Thanks!

Rick

[swing_developer]

OK I'll bite.

Tonny said:
 "fixing the problems in  Swing required large API changes"

Tonny, can you elaborate on what those large API changes were?

regards.



On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Tonny Madsen
<tonny.madsen@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>  Solerman Kaplon wrote:
>  >
>  > IBM had their own JVM, already faster than sun. Don't need to wait
>  > anything to make patches. And Sun was always slow at anything, it is no
>  > surprise it taken that long, they are the reference JVM, just like
>  > things need to work, don't necessarly mean they're the ones to make it
>  > faster. Kudos for IBM to make sun race to it thought, otherwise they
>  > might not had gone through it.
>  >
>
>  Yes, IBM did - and do - have their own JVM, but... fixing the problems in
>  Swing required large API changes... What would SUN have said about IBM
>  making an incompatible version of Swing? Just think about the big fight
>  between SUN and Microsoft in those days...
>
>  Anyway, choosing between a simple - and more and less guaranteed - solution
>  (SWT) and a politically doubtful solution (a modified Swing), I still think
>  IBM made the correct choose.
>
>  Regards,
>  Tonny
>  --
>  View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Choosing-Netbeans-platform-or-Eclipse-RCP-tp16012394p16162453.html
>
>
> Sent from the Netbeans - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>