I think I’m in love…
I just finally got around to reading the docs on Java enums (introduced in 1.5… yeah, I’m a bit behind on this one) since this is the first project I’ve been on that’s been in a pure 1.5 environment.
Oh my.
Oh my.
It’s about dang time.
I can’t wait to use this tomorrow. I’m really, really, really looking forward to that.
The language keeps getting better… too bad all the toolchains SUCK MISERABLY for what they’re being shoehorned into. The more I spend time writing corporate web-apps. The more I am convinced that a web browser is not the tool for the job. AJAX is nothing but a band-aid over a severed artery. It is NOT easier to write rich interaction clients with ajax than it is to write a rich client specifically for the given purpose, where all the interaction a user could desire can be done effectively and simply.
I am so sick of “webapps” that I can’t begin to explain it. The current state of the industry in regards to integration and usability is years behind where it was in 1998. We’ve been steadily regressing. When, oh when will people figure this out and correct the situation?!
I can only hope that it’s sometime soon.
August 8th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
You have a funny definition of usability. If usability is so much worse, how come MySpace has 100 million users and FrontPage, Netscape/Mozilla Composer, iWeb, and every other personal web site builder tool have probably a combined total of a few million?
August 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Keith, just because something is miserable to use, doesn’t mean people won’t use it, if there’s some overriding reason they feel compelled to use it. Also, if people have become accustomed to miserable user experiences, they just expect it and accept it.
Now, on the Java enum thing, wow, what took Sun so dang long? But, at least once they got around to it, they actually improved over the power offered in the other languages I’m familiar with.
August 8th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Yeah, I\’m such a biggot when it comes to having applications that work like I expect them to.
I like buttons, list boxes, drag zones, menus, the whole thing to actually *gasp* look like a real application!
A technology that was designed for information presentation turned into the worlds biggest kludge for a platform to ever exist.
Mozilla was on the right path, but the issue is that people need to be able to DITCH THE BROWSER, and build their own application easily and quickly. That doesn\’t just go for the front-end. The distributed backend needs to have those facilities as well.
So far, I\’ve not seen anything that comes close to the ease-of-use of a real application in a website, and while I detest the current lame attempts that people are making at building that kind of interaction though a browser — I\’m still tinkering with it in my free time. Why? Because I wouldn\’t know how bad it sucks if I hadn\’t tried to do some of it myself. That, and because that\’s what idiots who don\’t know any better than what they read in Dr. Dobbs or JDJ (Java programming with POJO as a cover story?!) pay me to make. They read trade rag, learn new buzzword. They ask us to build new buzzword compliant thing-a-ma-bob. When we try to tell them latest buzzword isn\’t really the best tool for thing-a-ma-bob, they get insulted, angry, and don\’t pay. See how this works?
And if you want to point at site-building tools (almost all of which suck miserably) the best one I\’ve seen to date has got to be iWeb. Yes, I\’ve used it. It beats the crap out of wordpress — but doesn\’t allow the rich interaction off the Apple .mac servers. Gee, I wonder why. Ohhh… Because they finally are on the right path! Someone is figuring it out. Someone will figure it out. There is no reason this can\’t be done better than it is. Corporate infrastructure is a hodge-podge off crap. I\’m convinced that the days of one-size-fits-all over-bloated crap software (think Word, Excel, etc) is going to come to an end. I do not know when or how. It\’s a house of cards that\’s starting to out-weigh the structural ability of playing cards.
August 8th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Gee, look at that. I edit my own comment, and now all the apostrophes have /’s in front of it. NICE.
*blank blank blank* web-app…. *grumble*
August 15th, 2006 at 6:46 am
Seems as it’s backslashifying the ‘ (singlequote). 1st I was thinking you misstyped : )
I like what you did with javashare! (Too bad nobody seems to use be/java -share anymore : ( )
August 17th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Bryan, this is a webapp possibly *from* 1998, (you’ll recognise the site/author name from MacOS 8 days … http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/
I think I’m in love too ;)