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F3 is now openjfx

Looks like Chris Oliver's F3 has become openjfx, as of JavaOne. I'm slightly perturbed by Harold's casual dismissal of it...openjfx is integrating a dependency management system into the core of the language, and my gut is that it will be quite effective for the UI tasks it's targeted at. We really do need new thinking here, and new languages/syntax for it.

Lots to explore here, including a netbeans plugin.

So the question is...how effective is this UI-oriented DSL going to be? Is it more productive? Easier to use? And how can we quantify that?

RJ

(note: I guess I should add that Harold is rather famously stodgy when it comes to language change, and apparently even alternatives ;)

(notenote: I think F3 was a better name. Binding this language and technology to the Java brand on the desktop is a mistake. All that does is create confusion about what it is.)

By rossjudson at 2007-05-09 15:26 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6555 reads

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massive confusion

It is interesting to see so many people dismissing it without really understanding what it is. I wouldn't blame Chris Oliver screaming at his monitor every time he sees a new blog post about F3...sory, JavaFX.

People seem to be looking at it as a Flash replacement, Ajax replacement, 'J2SE on the Phone,' whatever else...I see the marketing department behind it :)

I agree with rossjudson, it is interesting indeed. The 'bind' operator, the object literal syntax, the ability to attach 'triggers' to list operations, the ability to view the result of the code as it is typed are all interesting. Seperation of pure functions and operations could, perhaps, be used to safely and automatically make use of several CPUs. I suspect poeple will start to appreciate it more after they have had a chance to use it.

By shahbaz at Wed, 2007-05-09 19:23 | login or register to post comments

I'm pretty stoked about

I'm pretty stoked about this, considering its my current research direction. It will now be much easier for me to describe what kind of language SuperGlue is to other people (its like JavaFX), and maybe research in this area will be more readily accepted :) We could also start standardizing terminology and remembering/learning from old languages in this area.

Kudos to Chris! As far as I could tell, this was his pet project from another company, but he got Sun to adopt it as part of their fight AJAX/Silverlight strategy. And considering that Chris got to share the stage with Gosling himself...this is a language designer's dream. Impact is definitely good.

JavaFX is an OK name, F3 was OK to but it sounded like a keyboard key. As far as positioning goes, JavaFX competes against XAML/Expression Designer/Code behind, although MS really doesn't have a unified solution to good declarative UI construction yet.

By Sean McDirmid at Wed, 2007-05-09 19:40 | login or register to post comments

Previous LtU thread on F3

Here is the previous discussion on LtU on F3:
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1832

By Kevin Krouse at Wed, 2007-05-09 20:03 | login or register to post comments

Per Bothner is working on OpenJFX

Per Bothner, of Kawa fame, has joined Sun to work on JavaFX:

http://sourceware.org/ml/kawa/2007-q2/msg00014.html

By el-vadimo at Wed, 2007-05-09 23:15 | login or register to post comments

The LTU discussion has been

The LTU discussion has been moved two posts up to http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2242 for some reason.

By Sean McDirmid at Thu, 2007-05-10 08:49 | login or register to post comments