Java sure rocks.

[TheBuzzer]

Java makes programming so much easier for complex web applications.

At first I was trying to do ajax stuff using php with javascript. That sure gets messy.

Later on I found google web toolkit which is java programming that change to javascript.

This made doing ajax and stuff a whole lot eaiser.

Well I needed a printout of the information inputted. At first I used some php library for pdf generation. It sucked because everything had to be calculated and was all estimates.

After doing that pdf I found iText which is a java library for pdf generation. The page breaks features were way better than php. I still had to write some calculations however those calculations were exact.

I used glassfish to host my web application now where I could code mysql connection using java.

 

[tim_m]

i haven't used java for web stuff but if you want to do cross-platform gui stuff it really is write once, test everywhere. granted i really do use java as my primary language so i can make fun of it

 

[devman]

Java makes programming so much easier for complex web applications.

At first I was trying to do ajax stuff using php with javascript. That sure gets messy.

Later on I found google web toolkit which is java programming that change to javascript.

This made doing ajax and stuff a whole lot eaiser.

Well I needed a printout of the information inputted. At first I used some php library for pdf generation. It sucked because everything had to be calculated and was all estimates.

After doing that pdf I found iText which is a java library for pdf generation. The page breaks features were way better than php. I still had to write some calculations however those calculations were exact.

I used glassfish to host my web application now where I could code mysql connection using java.

If your interested in web java you should look at Servlets/JavaServer Pages and JavaServer Faces spec.

Also you can use a JPA (ORM) implementation like Hibernate, that sits between your processing code (business code) and JDBC.

 

[Cyrilix]

i haven't used java for web stuff but if you want to do cross-platform gui stuff it really is write once, test everywhere. granted i really do use java as my primary language so i can make fun of it

I don't know if there are any designers for swing GUIs, but in our UI class, all the code was written by hand... and that gets tedious really quickly when you've created a JPanel for the 10th time. I'd much rather pull out Visual Studio's Winforms designer, design the layout, and code up the event handling only.

 

[tim_m]

i've been using netbeans for swing gui designing lately. i don't miss doing it by hand

 

[devman]

Its definitely useful to know how all that code works, so its a great lesson learning to build the GUIs by hand, and sometimes necessary when you need to tweaks things. As the above poster said NetBeans is great for Swing GUI building. I tend to use NetBeans for desktop apps and Eclipse for server side Java.

 

[:LJ:]

Java's OK for lots of things, but I'm yet to be convinced that it's the best choice for anything in particular...I used to think it was for web apps, but the Ruby/Rails combo has pretty much nuked that idea (sure, Rails isn't great for huge webapps, but then nothing is really...yet).

The main problem I've found with Java is not actually the language or the platform - it's the apps people write with it, particularly server-side stuff. For some reason, Java apps seem to be more prone to getting very big and unwieldy very quickly. This isn't me taking pot-shots - I've been inheriting and writing Java applications for the last 7 years or so, and I still haven't come across one which achieved 100% functionality without becoming a mess.

 

[TheBuzzer]

Well that's why there are classes and libraries. Some stuff will become a mess. Right now in my code the messy part is the user interface.

I coded everything by hand and it was fine but they wanted the same program to have three different type of displays. That made my code messy because I had to make if statements to place objects at different locations.

Another thing that makes programming a mess is the people keep changing what they want. So your plan and design gets changed.

One reason my code isn't too messy is because I sometimes rewrite some structures to make it more accessable and less messy.


I never really understood how to use hibernate so I coded my own java to sql class. It converts TreeMaps into a row. And A vector of treemap is the database.

 

[fluxion]

google web toolkit converts java to ajax? that actually sounds pretty wicked...

i agree, ajax turns into a mess so easilly. im sure experienced ajax coders will argue its cuz im a noob, which is fair, but the whole methodology lends itself to creating a mess of spaghetti code

 

[DrFreeze]

good god, someone actually happy with itext......

i have a few years of professional java coding behind me (and many more in front hopefully), and itext SUCKS imho, the API is really annoying to work with..

granted, its probably better then 90% of the php libs out there...

my favorite way of generating a PDF in java: just drawing onto a 2d canvas, and then insert the drawing as an image into a pdf using itext..

 

[cyclone3d]

Java is SLOW compared to just about any other programming language.

Although I have done very little so far with Ajax, from what I have seen so far, I like it WAY WAY better than Java.

Java is just icky and buggy. Have they fixed the bug where a Java app will crash if you open it up on or move it to a secondary monitor? That bug has been around for years.

 

[DrFreeze]

Java is SLOW compared to just about any other programming language.

Although I have done very little so far with Ajax, from what I have seen so far, I like it WAY WAY better than Java.

Java is just icky and buggy. Have they fixed the bug where a Java app will crash if you open it up on or move it to a secondary monitor? That bug has been around for years.

You sir, are an idiot

- In recent years java performance (note, this only works if you actually update your jvm) has gotten to the point where it rivals C++ and the like, in some cases even surpassing it.

- Comparing Ajax with java is like comparing a spoon with an axe, they do not serve the same purpose, only morons will try to do ajax stuf with java and vice versa, and both technologies can be used together (and frequently are).

- The bug you mention is related to a design choice i probably would have made the same way. Either you update your graphics environment at application start, or you have to periodically poll (since there are no garantuees that a guest os will be able to notify the jvm), in which case to prevent the exception, you would have to poll a lot, which would suck... Either way, the only way to trigger this is to disable your secondary screen, start te app, re-enable the screen and then move, who the frack does that?

Besides, java is hardly used for desktop apps anymore these days, let alone applets.. The real work for java is server-side, making sure the amazon gets your order and such..

 

[oplin]

SpringFramework is pretty kick ass to work with, so far i like it alot. Works with flex pretty well too, there is usually never 1 language to rule them all, they all have strengths and weakness's. If you're coding up a custom MS document parser probably better to use C Sharp as they have it almost native last time i checked, for the OpenOffice format whatever they called it.