jeffreportmill1

This is very nice! It is easy to get lost in most raw Swing code, but this seems to result in hierarchically defined code that keeps nested UI elements in context. I can almost visualize the resulting UI from the code.

I just wish FaceBook was presented to me like HackerNews:

  - My Favorite Group is meeting next week at a local restaurant
  - My Neighbor is on yet another amazing trip with his perfect family
  - My old classmate found a preachy article that he wants to share
  - etc.

I crave the connection, but there is such a thin line between that and bragging. I love it at a party when I ask what someone has been up to and they have an interesting response. I would hate if that same person just walked up in my face and said, "I went to Aruba, a Paul McCartney Concert, and that new trendy restaurant in town". Then I also hate that I feel that way.

I could do a better job of self moderating if the presentation wasn't so intentionally in my face.

This will seem unrelated, but I’ve often heard people complain about going to the gym: “I hate going to the gym because everyone else is so beautiful and I’m out of shape”. But distorts the reality that most people don’t go to the gym. And the people at the gym the most are the ones that mostly build their lives around it.

So following the HN community too closely can stir feelings of insecurity and inferiority and the imposter syndrome. And yeah, I feel it sometimes, too. :-)

I don’t think that is specifically a Java thing, you can find over-engineered code in any place and time. Maybe Java bringing OOP and a large standard library inspired more than its share of this.

Having said that, I just did a sting at a Java company with a 20 year old codebase and deleted over 100 useless classes like this in the first 6 months. My favorite was a class that was called “AbstractAbstraction”, I kid you not. It was at the end of a particularly ridiculous string of gratuitously added classes.

I don’t think some people realize that when you are at the top of the stack, writing apps, not frameworks, it’s a mistake to spend too much time engineering too much flexibility into the design.

The abacus and calculator analogy is a good one. I've been thinking about ChatGPT in terms of standard language libraries. So far, I think that is what ChatGPT is good for - solving small, self contained problems that are building blocks of larger apps. I'm glad that they are there, and I'm sure ChatGPT will provide a lot of code of this nature.

So I shouldn't be concerned, because I love standard library functions. But for education, I fear that students will be discouraged (or tempted to cheat) when they are learning to code with exercises that can be solved with a simple online query.

C, ObjC, JavaScript.

I've read that, however, I do sometimes see submissions with text that also have links in the text.

For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33906591

How do I make my submission URL a link? Adding <> brackets doesn't seem to help.

Nice article! I'm a big fan of TeaVM - it's nice to see this coverage.

This is very nice - congratulations! I like that you are thinking about both the product and the content, it really shows your broader vision.

I taught an after school program that started with Scratch and Greenfoot, and I understand some of the problems you describe when starting with block coding.

Isn't there a simple way to pair a markdown file with an html/JS file so that the md file is rendered?

Myfile.html: <script>loadMarkDownFile()</script>

Myfile.md: ## Markdown in the browser!

Funny you should ask, this just showed up in my youtube feed yesterday:

"What was Coding like 40 years ago?":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r83N3c2kPw

Can’t believe I’m the first/only one to post these:

- Upgrade by Blake Crouch

- Biography of the Pixel by Alvy Ray Smith

Like Project Hail Mary, Upgrade is the kind of book I really wanted back when I was a michael crichton fan. His last book, Recursion was really my favorite. I love books that secretly teach you a thing or two and celebrate science and engineering.

Biography of the Pixel was a fascinating history of computer graphics and fundamental graphics concepts.

Here’s my thought: support drag and drop to the desktop so you can use this to easily transfer files between machines. Copy/paste might be interesting too.

Check your timeline: Apple bought NeXT, then Steve Jobs returned, not the other way around.

There are many reasons why NeXT beat out BeOS. NeXT spent years making NS ready for the enterprise. Be OS was a great technology demo, but it had yet to be battle tested.

NextStep would have been a great example of how better products often fail. Getting sold to Apple was not at the top of our list of successful exit strategies.

I would recommend reading the ridiculously old book, 'How to win friends and influence people'. I have heard about this book for years but always assumed it was smarmy and out of date. I recently read it, and while it was definitely written in another era, it is still a great meditation on how to be a better human being.

I also recommend "We need to talk" (Celeste Headlee). I'm sure there are many others. It sounds silly, but getting along with others is a skill that we have to sometimes think consciously about.

Another tip that I think works for me: Read it out loud to yourself. Maybe carve out 20-30 mins each morning. Part of talking to people is talking out loud and becoming comfortable using words we aren't used to using.

Having said all that, I'm not someone who should be dispensing advice on this subject. I'm a bit of an introvert myself. :-)

How do you save figr docs to the cloud?

If you have like-minded buddies, you are way ahead of the game (even if you don't have an idea). Choose something that seems fun - maybe something you would want to buy/use yourselves and start working on it. Borrow 8 hours a week from your current employer. They won't miss it, because you will probably gain that much in productivity as your skills and morale improve.

In the end, if you find success (which is rare) it probably won't be with your original idea. Once you have a body of work, keep an eye out for other applications of your core technologies. When your real idea comes along, be willing to pivot.

Well this isn't helpful for those of us that care about Java in the browser. In any case, JPro is really more "Java projected in the browser" (or like twitch/remote-desktop). It's a shortcut with significant drawbacks. I'm more a fan of TeaVM, CheerpJ, J2CL and JSweet.

https://reportmill.com/snaptea/

Agism is real, but probably unintentional. By definition, most people hire subordinates, and in their mind they picture someone some number of years their junior. When an older person applies, they just don't fit the image they have created in their mind (assuming they don't feel outright threatened).

It might even be that agism has the opposite effect once you are established in an organization. If you are qualified, experienced and engaged, you might be first in line for promotions because then you fit the image.

The best advice to fight agism is probably to use your network. If you've been around the industry for many years and made friends along the way, that might level the playing field.

Fortune favors the brave, but I would say don't quit the day job. Try to 'borrow' 20% to work on your hustle as a hobby project - the company will almost surely get that time back in increased quality and productivity in your day job. I did that 25 years ago, then lucked out by making an initial bootstrap sale that got the ball rolling. My first effort ran for a dozen years, but since then I've been side hustling my side hustle. It's fun to follow your interests, but it's not a good way to have work/life balance.

So much of people's outcome is based on luck, which I got more than my share of. The best advice that I got, however (that you also have to be lucky to take), is to find like minded people and do something with a partner or group.

Great advice! I call that the "Mad Dash" - just try to get something working in a quick and dirty fashion. I often don't understand the problem until I work on the solution.

I'm interested in J2CL, but surprised by the sparse implementation of the JRE. I currently use TeaVM and CheerpJ which have both managed a much more complete JRE implementation despite less backing. I don't have the resources to help much myself, but I hope the JRE gets more support in the future.

SnapKit does support Retina/HiDPI, but most of the demos assume a larger default screen.

The look is a little dated, much of it due to the gray backgrounds. It just needs a couple months of work from someone with more aesthetic design sense than me.

I use SnapKit to do Java desktop development which compiles easily to JavaScript using TeaVM. SnapKit is both modern and conventional, a good middle ground between Swing and JavaFX. But most importantly, it combines the traditional win of desktop Java UI dev with the ease of web deployment.

SnapKit: https://github.com/reportmill/SnapKit

Demos: https://reportmill.com/snaptea/

Disclaimer: I am the primary author, so this is self-serving. But it doesn't mean it sucks. :-)

Possible alternate title: "People with early onset Alzheimer's frequently forget to get flu shots".

Off topic, but man is that document hard to use as a reference. Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section.

(I have used that document a lot to write a custom PDF generator and parser in Java, using a downloaded copy)

No, ReportMill is 100% SnapKit, though inspired by Swing/JavaFX.

You’re right though, I could use the touch of a graphic design pro.

:-)

Not an applet at all! Apps are easily compiled to JS, including needed runtime, so it’s running native. And only 1MB compressed.