Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Thursday July 01, 2004

JavaOne's SWT and Swing debates Now I see how we got to where we are in the debate titled above.

I already knew that IBM's old tools were smalltalk based, but I didn't know the group that had built those IDEs was also the one that had originated SWT.

Now that I know that, how SWT came to be makes sense. Basically you have a company that had an interesting (elegant?) solution for the lack of anything even close to portability standards for UI toolkits. In building their next generation of tools, they were faced with the same problem in using Java to develop their IDEs. They used a solution they already knew well.

I personally (not that my opinion matters much) have only two quarrels withthis:
- When buying into Java, there are times to conform and help push something everyone benefits from forward, and there are times to mutate in multiple directions until the harsh realities of the 'real world' show the best choice. Was this even considered when spending a substantial amount of effort on SWT? Probably not, and IBM (if you could personify a company) should have thought about it a bit more.
- Why did IBM latch on to it big time and use it as a way to market themselves and fragment the community? Specifically by building the whole thing and then plopping it on the world, calling it Eclipse (come on guys!) and then flinging the open source term about, as if Sun wouldn't take help from a licensee in improving Java's Swing for all.

Anyway, the deed, be it damage or not is done. We now have two toolkits. It sounds like it's IBM and the eclipse org who will keep SWT moving forward (and constantly chasing the platform changes), and it's the rest of the world, including Sun (remember, all of the other major IDEs are swing based) will be keeping Swing going. Plus the latter group will be getting better and simplifying with stuff like JDNC, JDIC and Project Looking Glass.

Disagree with me? Please, post me a comment.

Trivia for the day: Where did the name Swing come from? Same place as Duke! The Jazz theme of course.

Updated wirelessly from my Treo... ( Jul 01 2004, 05:38:55 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]