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The language you write an UI in, isn't directly connected to how it feels. There are plenty of old feeling web, native and mobile apps out there. Some years ag
by mike_hearn 4y ago
The language you write an UI in, isn't directly connected to how it feels. There are plenty of old feeling web, native and mobile apps out there.
Some years ago I wrote a desktop app in JavaFX. This is a Java UI toolkit (though I wrote in Kotlin), but, you can style it with CSS. It was a piece of cake to give it a GitHub-ish feel. The result felt a lot like a web app, just without the browser chrome. The app in question was a peer to peer app that benefited from some libraries written in Java, so it was a good fit for what the app needed to do.
At the moment it's a bit painful to do this sort of thing because of a lack of good distribution tools. But, that's about to change ...
- oneplane 4y agoJavaFX was about to be revolutionary for over a decade ;-) First it was availability, then it was integration, then it was build tooling and now it's distribution. Most of the Java-for-the-user only exists on Android and niche markets (like some financial software). And while it's true that the language doesn't determine the UX, the different things I mentioned (frameworks, languages etc.) are mostly relevant due to the mindshare, adoption and general availability of up-to-date resources to get the job done.
- mike_hearn 4y agoI don't think JavaFX is revolutionary, it's just a nicely designed UI toolkit. There are lots of markets where software needs GUIs but doesn't actually benefit from anything the web provides, beyond the general inertia you mention.