Articles : JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java : Q and A :

UI Components in Java

Q

I am currently looking for languages/technologies to implement a UI layer in Linux. The existing product is mainly written in C and is quite a large congregation of separate applications. Linux seems to be rather immature in its support for software components. There are plenty of application frameworks/languages but are all in release 1.0!

My investigation is converging on a combination Java/JavaBeans/CORBA for the UI and C++/CORBA for the business objects and logic underneath. I am an experienced VB/C++ programmer and used COM/ActiveX extensively for my previous projects. In comparison do you rate Java as a good language to produce UI software components? (that is, third party UI components, developmental support and performance issues).

A

Well, having spent a good portion of my career writing Java components, both on the client side and the server side, I definitely feel qualified to have an opinion. :)

I think that Java is an excellent language for writing custom GUI components. In fact, it is wonderfully easy to extend from the AWT, or even the SWING, GUI object hierarchy and even easier to quickly build interfaces using the objects provided.

That said, however, nothing is easier than Visual Basic in Visual Studio.

I don't think you'll find anything that easy in the java universe, even Visual J++, which will be much like your standard MS IDE.

Further, the range of existing GUI widgets pre-SWING is somewhat lacking, so you need to be prepared to forego niceties such as drag-and-drop, roll over drop down menus, etc.

However, you'll find distribution to be unbelievably easy compared to MS executables and I think that you'll be able to write a better object hierarchy (VB being only a partial OO language).

More importantly, you should use this opportunity to expand. It sounds like you have a good handle on the Microsoft side of things. Now would be a good time to increase your breadth, especially if you can get paid to do so.

You will always be able to reapply the skills you learn with java to the MS platform :)

Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com

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