Pamela Hendersen

Khalid A. Mughal wrote:Theory and Practice
As a guest author this week, maybe I can pose a couple of questions (it will turn out they are quite a few) in this forum.
I am very much interested in views on the following observation made by some of the readers.
People can pass the Programmer Certification exam without having written any code.
Is this what the present Programmer Certification exam encouraging?
Emphasizing theory and no practice?
Should the exam be changed?
Do employers know or care that they are getting "theoretical" programmers?
In a similar vain, one could ask the following questions:
Would you feel safe if people, who had only read the driving manual and never driven a real car, were unleased onto the unsuspecting rush-hour down-town traffic?
Would you vote for a sheriff that had practiced horse-riding only on a rocking horse?
(I know at least which horse to bet on.)
[Disclaimer: No innuendos to the sheriffs that go galloping on this site.]
What do you think?
Cheers.
-- khalid

Excellent points Khalid. Well written. Its 10 years later and nothing has changed. It probably never will. I got 87 in my exam easily after about two months of cramming and a little bit of coding.
I never used memory dumps though. Look at me now. I can barely make some serious code. I realized that if one does a lot of good coding problems or small projects (not necessarily toy projects), then
they can understand and remember way more than they would if they only crammed for the exam.

The SCJP is a joke and is not even worth the paper on which it is printed. I wonder why they don't change the exam and make it more well rounded.
I suggest a two stage exam. 1 - Regular scjp with more questions. 2 - Toy application programming

For example, if you know C++, learning Java becomes a little bit easier. If you know java, learning dot net becomes very easy. So, your knowledge of
one thing can be useful in another. So, its not a complete waste of time.

In the same way, can the knowledge of Swing be useful elsewhere ?

Ulf Dittmer wrote:
The main use for Java GUIs at this point is probably specialized in-house GUIs, for which it's hard to gauge how wide-spread thy are (somewhat similar to the niche Motif used to inhabit). Those would generally use some network technology to access server-side resources, so Swing would be used alongside JAX-RS, JAX-WS, sockets, RMI, EJB etc. If for some reason companies want to build a desktop app instead of a web app for some of their systems, there's value in using the same programming language.

Agree. If most of your tools are based on java, then why hire another person just for non-java UI ? Use the existing employees to do it.
Looks like swing is just piggybacking on the need for other "tools" like JAX-RS, JAX-WS, sockets, RMI, EJB etc.

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:

Pamela Hendersen wrote:So why does Java even have swing in the first place ? Only so that java developers can have something besides the console to control their programs ? Looks like Java itself was meant to be an ONLY back-end language.

Three to eight years ago, the financial industry was writing Swing UIs for the traders. I don't know if they still do.

Probably replaced by a web based front end.

I did a search on Indeed, Simply Hired and Dice. Surprisingly, a lot of jobs require Swing. However, after a quick glance at some of them, I noticed that they require many other skills also. I suspect that Swing is only a small part of these jobs.
Unless legacy swing code is the issue, why do people want to use Swing and hire people for Swing ? Are these employers merely including Swing only because they use a job requirement creation template from 5 years ago ?

Why people, why do you want to use swing ?

So why does Java even have swing in the first place ? Only so that java developers can have something besides the console to control their programs ? Looks like Java itself was meant to be an ONLY back-end language.

I have not come across any famous and popular software which uses swing for its front end or GUI. Is it even used by any useful and significant software? I am not talking about small or obscure projects. I am talking about software like Microsoft Office, Android OS, Google Chrome etc. Additionally, its not even a requirement for almost 99% of the java jobs. Looks like its a dead and decaying technology.

Is there any replacement or alternative to swing for Java ?

Forums are a great place for learning. But, often it is not possible to get answers as quickly as they are needed. I am looking for a reliable place where I
get some mentoring, guidance, code review, design review etc for my personal projects, whenever I need it. These projects are not commercial projects and
are only meant for self-learning purposes. I am willing to pay if the mentors/consultants are really knowledgeable and have undergone some background
check to ensure quality.

I looked at a couple of freelancing sites. But, those look suspicious and useless for my purpose. Most of the people I had hired for a previous project were COMPLETE BOZOS.
They had a lot of skills and good testimonies from most of the people they worked for. But, they could not explain basic things in their code and were out to keep me dependent
on them so that they can squeeze my money out of me.

Is there any website where thoroughly vetted consultants can help people like me, instead of code monkeys ?

The back-end of my GUI program is about 50% complete. It is already so "huge and complex" (already) that it cannot be tested using a console interface. That would involve programming too many complicated loops and such, which is a pain. I did test some small modules while coding, but I doubt if that will suffice. I guess that I will have to develop GUI along the way to test every feature after i create it. Is this the best way or is there a better way to test my code ?

Steve Myers wrote:MigLayout's is pretty popular, here's where I heard of it - I have had no issues with it so far. Link also has quite a bit of discussion on layout managers in general.

Is there a guide which can tell me exactly when to use the MigLayout and when to not ?

Any serious disadvantages of the CardLayout ?

Thanks for all the info about the layouts. I was surprised to see the MigLayout. Never knew that existed. Don't know if it is popular and well tested though.
Card Layout also seems useful in my case.

I am also a little concerned about multi-threading/concurrency. Is there a list of pitfalls or things to be careful about when creating concurrent programs with Swing ?

Steve Luke wrote:The first thing to do is read The Swing Trail in the Java tutorials, or a Swing book. There are a lot of components, and you should become familiar with them, or at least comfortable in your ability to discover them.

Of particular note are the Layout Managers. Being comfortable with your options here makes building the GUI much easier - you have to learn to pick the correct layout for what you want to display, rather than using one or two you know about and trying to force them to work in all situations. What I do when laying out GUIs is to try to consider different portions of the layout independently - I create different panels and initially different windows for each layout portion, until I get it right. Then, when I have all the parts correct independently, I take the panels where each is laid out and combine them into the final layout. That helps me from trying to make everything fit into one super-layout control which tends to be hard to put together and modify. And if you keep the independent layouts in different classes/objects, it can make it easier to re-use the same layouts in different views.

Thanks Luke. Can you suggest what might be a good layout for this purpose ? Is it as "simple" as creating a couple of panels for things like key board, display, text fields, drop down menus etc and dumping them into the appropriate layout ?

I want to make a simple switchboard in Swing. This switchboard controls all the bulbs in a building. The switchboard has a keyboard that lets you select the bulb location from a drop down menu (eg 2nd floor, room 5). Then, you can either turn the bulb off or on or change its brightness.
I want to also display which bulbs are on and their floor number. I need some basic guidance on how to make the GUI only for my program. The stuff behind the GUI should be easy.

I am posting the screens for this below. The application does not look exactly like this. But, this is what the theme is like -