Beachhead Dispatch

I have established a beachhead of sorts. A subset of the new model and UI is implemented. Everything is in place to launch the attack on conditionals. I have accumulated enough battle experience with C# and WPF to assess their strengths and weaknesses, which is the substance of this report. The bottom line is that WPF has some serious design defects, but as a package with C# it still looks like the best choice for my needs. Continue reading “Beachhead Dispatch”

You are in a maze of twisty little classes, all alike.

OK, so maybe going with WPF wasn’t such a great idea after all. It is just so incredibly over-generalized and over-engineered. I am hitting my gag limit. I don’t have the time or the interest to become an expert on this monstrosity. I am scared of having to debug the mysteries hidden within this black box. They are simplifying it for Silverlight, but that is not ready. I have this sinking feeling that I have made a big mistake. Continue reading “You are in a maze of twisty little classes, all alike.”

JavaFX

Sun just announced their entry into the Rich Internet Application horse race. JavaFX is essentially a domain-specific language for GUI construction layered on top of Swing. I rather like it. It reminds me of Tcl/Tk – light-weight, pragmatic, declarative rather than procedural. Sun must have been so desperate to not be left behind that they didn’t have time to over-design it to be all things to all people. If Sun can refrain from ruining it, it might turn out really nicely. Unfortunately it is not yet usable enough for my work. Continue reading “JavaFX”