| > If you're just starting out, it can very well make more sense to use Microsoft Visual C++, which costs less than a commercial Java compiler and comes with an IDE that's light years ahead of anything available to Java developers. Sorry but you are way wrong. I do consulting in Java, .NET and C++ eco-systems, and started using C++ back in 1993, when C++ARM was the only reference for a possible future standard. The only C++ IDE that for many years could match the Java ones is C++ Builder. Visual C++ only started to match C++ Builder now with the C++/CX + XAML, for the WinRT applications. And while Visual C++ debugger and code navigation are quite good, they still don't rival Java IDEs or even their own .NET experience, without installing something like Visual Assist or ReSharper C++. > You can't write an application in Java that has a native look and feel. Or at least you couldn't for the first several significant years of its life and even now I don't think there's a good story for writing a simple native application. Sure you can, but developers seem not to like to read books, so they just write crappy Java desktop applications without learning how to use Swing. https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004Y4UTHM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_... > Meanwhile you could grab wxWidgets or Qt (and there goes your budget for a java compiler) and have a native-looking cross-platform application. Which very few did, because back then Mac OSX didn't exist, Apple were on their death bed and "Linux Desktop Environment" was even more of a joke than it is today. We were targeting UNIX with Motif++ back in those days. Regarding Windows, OWL and later VCL were way better than anything that Microsoft produced for C++. Even XAML was initially targeted to .NET. As for Apple, we were mainly using Metrowerks with PowerPlant. > If this AOT work can give us fully contained native executables that we can distribute without having the user install Java and with significantly better performance than nodejs, maybe Java on the desktop can still happen. There are many applications that people aren't aware that are actually compiled with ExcelsiorJET. As I said, this generation doesn't pay for compilers. |