[TriLUG] Re: Managed languages (was .NET development on Linux)

[Ilan Volow]

On Jun 18, 2004, at 9:37 PM, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>
>
> Somewhere back in the late 1980s I was involved in doing a technical 
> due
> diligence effort when the aforementioned large computer company was
> looking at an alliance with a somewhat smaller personal computer 
> company
> which was developing a new software system for the next generation of
> their MAChines which was being written as a C++ framework.
>

Taligent?

>
> And Swing ain't necessarily the best choice for a Java GUI
> architecture/library. Actually some big pieces of Swing were 
> contributed
> by some of the same folks who were working on the C++ framework I
> discussed above.
>

I've gotten decent results by using Java with Apple's Cocoa API.  It's 
a nice blend of technologies; Java provides garbage collection (no 
retain/release cycles to worry about. Mostly), tons of libraries, and 
things that the Foundation API doesn't provide (like real regular 
expressions and real xml manipulation; Cocoa provides a great UI 
builder and a native-looking and feeling UI. A Cocoa app written in 
Java acts and feels like a real application.

> A progenitor of the Eclipse IDE was written using Swing, one of the 
> lead
> Eclipse UI designers is one of the gang of four pattern guys, and a
> graduate of the spun-off C++ framework company, who is lesser well 
> known
> as a very good Swiss skier.
>
> I'll always remember a presentation on the UI design for the IDE which
> he gave about the time the switch was made away from Swing. It included
> a slide he took while on a chair lift of a sign on the slope below with
> an icon of a skier falling from the chair lift with the words below:
>
>   DON'T SWING
>

There was actually some conscious attempt to design the user interface 
of Eclipse? ;)

--
Ilan Volow
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!