Java on the BSD Desktop?

[Christian Walther]

On 29/05/07, n j <nino80 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am wanting to write a gui frontend to pkg_cutleaves.  I see that it is
> > just a simple perl script so, it would be quite simple to just put a gtk
> > frontend on it and call it a day.  However, I am starting to write a
> > good amount of code in java and was wondering what others think about
> > java as the de-facto gui standard on the BSD desktop.
>
> For what it's worth, I think Java should be far more present in the
> FreeBSD at least as far as desktop is concerned and it's a good
> alternative to Qt/Tk/Gtk for GUI applications. Java is a fine serious
> programming language whose strongest selling point a long time ago
> ceased to be "write once, run anywhere".
>
I guess if everyone here on this list gives his/her two cents to this
topic we're having a nice java advocacy flame war. ;-)

So if one wants to write a piece of software in a certain programming
language: why not? Maybe there really is a user base for such an
application.
Personally I never would install such a software title. I think Java
is dead slow and needs too much resources to perform a specific tasks,
especially when you compare it to a GTK/Qt based application.
I've seen many software titles that just work on one plattform - the
"write once, run anywhere" market speech has never been done properly.
This might be due to way most Java programmers seem to develop their
applications: They believe that Java takes care of all tasks they
dislike from other languages, such as C. Properly allocating or
freeing memory, for example. (Especially when it's a bean used in a
Tomcat environment.)
I've never seen a complex java application that was usable on
different platforms. This includes stuff from IBM, EMC, Sun, BMC and
other big players. I know because I ask all the time. Me and my
collegues are using Suns "Sunray" thin clients for daily work...

Oh yes, and Java can't be installed without downloading the archive
manually, because I have to agree to a license.

I won't say that Java doesn't have it's uses - but as long as there's
an alternative use this.