[H-GEN] Java vs Anything flame war (?)

[Sarah Hollings]

Andrae Muys wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> ben.carlyle at invensys.com wrote:
> 
>>> Anti-java but pro-C#... amusing as the two platforms are close enough 
>>> that there is no rational reason to differentiate to that degree.
>>
>> I've seen sun's java version of their old workshop software (SunOne or 
>> some such). If you've seen the same then you'll probably understand 
>> when I say "If sun can't get java GUI apps working, how can I expect 
>> to do so?"
> 
> 
> I can do better than that; I have written java GUI apps before :). Swing 
> is a nice enough API, but getting decent performance is very hard.  OTOH 
> I've heard good things about SWT; its philosophy is going to avoid the 
> worst performance headaches of swing; and if the performance of eclipse 
> is anything to go by they have managed to avoid any showstoppers of 
> their own.
> 
>> I'm currently involved in a technology assessment for the future HMI 
>> direction of my group. So far QT is the stand-out choice.
> 
> 
> QT is nice, especially if you are a C++ shop.  However technically I 
> dislike their introduction of their own pre-processor; and as I am not 

We have a number of client side applications development projects on the 
boil.  Fortunately there is a lot of code reuse opportunity, or we ( my 
sidekick programmer and I ) would not stand a hope of delivering them on 
  time.  We ( meaning I ) chose Qt for the job.  I researched, but I 
hoped very much I had made the correct choice (the licences even at 
acadmic rates, were several g's).

The requirements were:
* solid, reliable binaries packages for each platform[1]
* free of library/vm compatibility and "test everywhere" type hassles.
* fast, clean, non-flakey UI's.
* small footprint
* multiple platform support, wintel/macosx/unix/[handheld]
* handle plugability in a crossplatform manner (.dll's/.so's/.dylibs)

Qt so far has not failed to impress.

qmake is a great tool, and delivers on the cross platform make 
environment.  check out the tree, including .pro file from cvs to win, 
macosx and linux; run "qmake", then make.  It just works.

> particularly fond of C++, it's close ties to C++.  From a business 

C++ is a pain.  If I tell the compiler I want to leak memory, and do 
segfaults, it will build the code to do it.  Java on the other hand will 
not do what I ask, and will protect me from myself.  And clean up stuff 
I leave lying around on the heap.

But C++ is very powerful, theres good libraries, the STL, xerces c++, 
mapm (an arbitrary precision math library) OpenGL, the lists go on. 
Like Java you can do real software engineering with it (unit testing, 
components etc), but its less bloat-prone.

> perspective I have serious concerns with the involvement of Canopy Group 
> in TrollTech.

Dunno.  Are they bad?  Haven't heard of them.  Isn't being a corporate 
bad guy de rigeur for venture capitalists?

Rgds,
-- 
Sarah Hollings                     IT Manager
sarah at humanfactors.uq.edu.au       The ARC Key Centre
Ph +61 7 33656080                  for Human Factors and
Mb +61 416 045401                  Applied Cognitive Psychology


[1] - current plan is to use the "nsi" nullsoft installer on windows, 
and the .dmg format on macosx, with a tar gz and .sh for unix.  Qt 
doesnt have an installer builder with it AFAIK.  I think this is a good 
thing.