GUI Pain

Posted in Computers & Technology, Education by Elliott Back on April 26th, 2005.

In 40 minutes I have to teach a section on Java GUIs in Swing. This is the most loathsome part of my job. To make it worse, the other TA I co-teach with has to be away, so I must wrestle with this alone. So, I’m printing API pages like mad for now…

Why are graphical user interfaces in Java so vile? There are a few reasons:

What the API says and what actually happens are very different.
Different parts of the Swing API can interact in non-specified ways creating all kinds of problems.
The API is platform dependent–writing a GUI for windows in Java may not be the same as writing the same GUI for linux.
The Swing model (One heavyweight container containing nested lightweight containers) is artificial.
The graphical interface is written through code which is text, in contrast to Microsoft’s visual GUI editors. I know in C# it becomes code eventually, but at least I don’t have to deal with it.
You look through API, find the perfect method that would solve all your problems … if it only weren’t deprecated…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 at 1:50 pm and is tagged with java guis, graphical user interfaces, lightweight containers, swing model, swing api, graphical interface, interfaces in java, editors, linux, microsoft, job. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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JWK 3 years ago 1 point
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I think Netbeans comes with a Swing GUI builder?

Granted, I hate Netbeans because it is itself written in Swing, and I hate the entire Swing/AWT kit with my whole being, but there are GUI GUI builders out there, for Java.

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