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There's an exciting desktop port of https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose done by Jetbrains: https://githu

There's an exciting desktop port of https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose done by Jetbrains: https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb

ta988 5y ago
It is exciting but even less there than JavaFX unfortunately. That's the problem with most UI systems, they evolve really fast in the beginning and show great promises, then the real difficulties arise and you have users that start to want a stable API.
- danieldisu 5y ago
  The thing is that Compose is becoming the de facto UI toolkit for Android, and there is A LOT of really smart people working on it (both at Google and Jetbrains). Maybe I'm over-hyping it, but I really doubt there has been a UI toolkit with that much work behind in a long time (Maybe Cocoa and one of the last 3 iterations of UI toolkit on Windows had that many work hours, but Cocoa does not work in all OS and the Windows ones well ... :shrug:)
  - brabel 5y ago
    Arguably, Flutter has had even more work done... it's incredible how Flutter tools work so beautifully on all OS's. I've played with Compose for Desktop and it's basically the Android framework, but running on desktop, as you might expect... but the tooling is currently not anywhere as good as Flutter IMO... and the customizations to make apps look like actual desktop apps (rather than mobile apps on Desktop which is just horrible) is currently impossible because there's just no docs on how to do it or any library that helps achieve that that I could find... Flutter, on the other hand, has multiple "themes" that work well on Desktop... I was amazed to watch a YT video where a Flutter guy showed how he implemented a Windows 3.1- like theme for Flutter and re-created a really old app for a customer that, for users, looks just like the old one (which was a strong requirement by the customer!).
danieldisu 5y ago
I was thinking that this combo can really change the native desktop development landscape, it's still too early to tell but if you can solve development speed, performance, looking good and easy deployment in one stack it would really improve over Electron based apps.
- shannah78 5y ago
  I agree. Once you fight through the initial project setup, and solve the deployment difficulties (jDeploy), Java is a remarkably good platform for Desktop development. The sheer number of libraries available to you with a simple copy/paste dependency snippet, is unrivalled in any other ecosystem.

ta988 5y ago

It is exciting but even less there than JavaFX unfortunately. That's the problem with most UI systems, they evolve really fast in the beginning and show great promises, then the real difficulties arise and you have users that start to want a stable API.

danieldisu 5y ago
The thing is that Compose is becoming the de facto UI toolkit for Android, and there is A LOT of really smart people working on it (both at Google and Jetbrains). Maybe I'm over-hyping it, but I really doubt there has been a UI toolkit with that much work behind in a long time (Maybe Cocoa and one of the last 3 iterations of UI toolkit on Windows had that many work hours, but Cocoa does not work in all OS and the Windows ones well ... :shrug:)
- brabel 5y ago
  Arguably, Flutter has had even more work done... it's incredible how Flutter tools work so beautifully on all OS's. I've played with Compose for Desktop and it's basically the Android framework, but running on desktop, as you might expect... but the tooling is currently not anywhere as good as Flutter IMO... and the customizations to make apps look like actual desktop apps (rather than mobile apps on Desktop which is just horrible) is currently impossible because there's just no docs on how to do it or any library that helps achieve that that I could find... Flutter, on the other hand, has multiple "themes" that work well on Desktop... I was amazed to watch a YT video where a Flutter guy showed how he implemented a Windows 3.1- like theme for Flutter and re-created a really old app for a customer that, for users, looks just like the old one (which was a strong requirement by the customer!).

danieldisu 5y ago

I was thinking that this combo can really change the native desktop development landscape, it's still too early to tell but if you can solve development speed, performance, looking good and easy deployment in one stack it would really improve over Electron based apps.

shannah78 5y ago
I agree. Once you fight through the initial project setup, and solve the deployment difficulties (jDeploy), Java is a remarkably good platform for Desktop development. The sheer number of libraries available to you with a simple copy/paste dependency snippet, is unrivalled in any other ecosystem.