Clojurians Log v2

@nblumoe I used Seesaw in the past and it was fun. I don't think I'd go there these days anymore. Not because Seesaw is bad, but because Swing seems kinda outdated for me. At least for anything beyond very simple UIs. Oh, and I consider JavaFX as effectively dead.

Oh really @ javafx? So what is the Java way of doing GUIs now? Don’t do them? 😄

(netbeans platform, eclipse rcp and apache pivot might actually be viable alternatives)

@nblumoe what are you up to that you’re considering Java GUIs?

a data analysis software for scientists working with chemical data with the purpose of identifying components that went into a mixture

I might very well go the electron route and this would probably beneficial if we want to provide a SaaS too at some point. however, most potential users would probably prefer a desktop application. with electron I am a bit concerned about being forced to get back into JS, HTML and CSS land (don’t enjoy that too much tbh) and having to split the application into renderer and the main process (node server). I don’t like node and I am not sure what weird things are going to get into my way because of that architecture. Also from using electron based apps (e.g. Wire, Slack, Atom) I am not too happy about their UX tbh

I would also prefer to go with Clj instead of Cljs

I’d choose Electron exactly for the reason you don’t want it for 😄

because of bad UX? 😉

(which is “it is Web tech”)

yeah, I totally get that and it is still my most likely approach still.

UX is always something that can be solved, I’m happy with Slack myself

@nblumoe If you need help getting started let me know! 🙂

And good luck 😄

cool thanks, especially for offering help. might come back to you once I start working on the GUI and figured out the basics

atm I am still working on the analytical algorithms (doing that in R) but I think I might get to the application implementation this month and of course it would be great doing some serious Clojure again. A bit afraid though it might not be exactly the right tool for the job… depends on the weight I put on my personal fun I guess. 😉

“Optimize for fun” 🙂

The rest is solvable 🙂

haha, yeah. but then I end up learning Prolog, Category Theory and esoteric data structures and wonder what I was supposed to do in the first place! 😉

@nblumoe I find that building UIs involves hassle no matter if it's with web tools or non-web tools. I used seesaw for a small POC project in the fall and found it a perfectly reasonable path.

That sounds true @daveliepmann

@ska so in your opinion, is there a Java GUI framework that isn't dead yet? Do even Java devs don't need GUIs anymore?

@nblumoe my very humble opinion on this is: Don't do UIs in Java. Electron or Qt would be my first choices. Qt only for open source projects, commercially it does not seem worth the hassle you'll run into.

And yes, I'd probably step out of Clojure-land for UIs. However, if you want to take a look at what I did in Seesaw in the past (internal stuff at work), I'll happily share that with you.

Thanks. I also thought about Qt, always liked that. Would probably do it with Python then though (would also fit the data analytics parts very well). I will count you in as +1 for electron. :)

I'm gonna check the available options and see how those align with requirements and plans. If I consider going down the seesaw route, I will come back to you, thanks!!

Qt with Python is not as good as it looks at first glance. Again, complicated in commercial environment, PyQt has its problems and Pyscite, even if officially part of Qt nowadays, was still on Qt 4x last time I looked. We should take this discussion off this Slack as it gets really un-clojure-berlinish.