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Sun to Amp Java for Desktop Performance?

mactari writes "Java client application developers should take a look at Sun's J2SE Client Developer Survey. Swing's relative slowness has always made a Java app with a GUI look and feel slow, and Sun might finally be doing something about it. Questions on the survey suggest Sun is considering moving away from a crossplatform look and feel (eg, Metal) towards native looks by default. If Sun is going to follow the suit played by IBM's native widget toolkit, SWT, or do things on individual platforms like Apple has done with its hardware accelerated version of Aqua-Swing, Java might finally find its way to becoming a competitor on the desktop."

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  1. Re:SWING kicks AWT's ass! by bay43270 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your going to be condescending, at least be correct. Swings components are not thread safe, true. That does not mean that all code needs to be implemented in the event thread! If fact, that is a classic rookie mistake (as the grandfather post points out).

    Read this interview with the Sun employees maintaining Swing:
    http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/co mmunity/ chat/JavaLive/2003/jl0121.html

    Here's an interesting quote:
    "I think the single biggest difference between so-so and really great Swing apps has to do with the way developers handle threading issues. As everyone knows, Swing is "single threaded," and this often leads developers to avoid using multiple threads. However, this is a BIG MISTAKE. The fact is that you can use many threads in your Swing app; you just need to follow the rules."

    The REAL problem with Swing is that the simplest way to implement any solution is usually also the wrong way. Too many people use DefaultTable model rather than building their own. Too many people subclass components because they 'don't get' UI Delegates. Too many people out there think that since Swing isn't thread safe (and they don't really understand threads enough to know what that means), they should let all their code run from the event thread. Swing's greatest weakness: bad programmers.