Folks please share your views on this.
In my view the cons for using the current implementation outweigh the pros by far:
Pros:
1) People find Python easier to use
Cons:
1) The user must have version 2.4 of Python installed otherwise the updater just does nothing on double-click and the user has to figure out that he must start the updater from terminal and install Python 2.4 from there. After that, the updater will work (to a degree as explained below).
I'm really sorry and don't mean insulting any developers who worked on this but it really looks like a decision of a freelancer who happens to not know Swing (and that Java already comes with Swing and that the current Swing implementation isn't that of like 5-7 years ago when it was really slow and lacked enough features).
2) The updater seems to not use threads, I'm really disappointed - while the updater downloads the updates the GUI freezes, now that's really lame for a 21 century app, not to mention the gross (warning) fonts and other obvious GUI inconsistencies.
3) In the end, why not use Swing? The user wouldn't have to install additional software (the Python 2.4+wxWidgets files). I myself could create a better GUI in Swing for that updater then that Python-wxWidgets GUI, it wouldn't require installing additional software and would use threads and hence the interface wouldn't hang while downloading or checking for updates, not to mention it would look "better".
I noticed this updater months ago and I thought it's just some kind of draft and that it will be redesigned so I decided to not issue this question at that time but time has passed and it looks like the devs are serious about keeping it this way.
So is there lack of experience of Swing among the glassfish devs?
Or if the devs think Swing is no good - can't they make the Python/wxWidgets implementation finally be "good" or at least "decent"?
GlassFish for Sun Microsystems afaik is a strategic product and Sun is a serious company and I'm impressed by such an implementation in a strategic product especially taking into consideration that GlassFish isn't a new product and there's been a lot of time to improve it and its updater.
I hope I'm not gonna be classified as troll or something, I'm just asking these questions cause I'm somewhat disappointed in its quality.
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