No JavaFX for iOS, Android or WP - why not?

[Pedro Duque Vieira]

>
> Richard and crew, is Oracle using JavaFX in commercial situations? If so
> are you able to tell us how/where (ie what space) and to what extent? Maybe
> knowing this will help us understand the reasons behind all this and the
> direction Oracle sees this all going (and allow us to decide if we want to
> help row that boat or jump out now).
> Just as (possibility more) disappointing as the mobile stuff is this vibe
> that Oracle does not see JFX having much of a role in the 'web' space. It
> looks like a straight bow-out to HTML5.
> I highly doubt any of this stuff is your, or your team's preference and
> sentiment, but as great as that is, it doesn't help us. Oracle holds the
> purse strings and that's what will control, and direct the platform.
> Serious, non-rhetorical question: if you were a front-line developer right
> now what sort of job would you say to your customer "the best platform your
> needs here is JavaFX"?
> The notion that once its all open source the community can do all the
> extra work to bridge the short commings is a bit of a fantasy.
> Firstly, it's going to take way too long to get there, established
> platforms are snowballing ahead as JavaFX struggles to catch up. We'll have
> HTML6 by the time JFX gets open sourced AND then the community gets round
> to adding features that needed to be in there 6 months ago to be
> competitive.
> Secondly, where's the incentive for the community to do this? Why not
> invest our time in making something with a more complete base better
> instead of plugging gaping holes in a niche, orphaned technology that "has
> interesting potential". There's no critical mass to the community yet, and
> another year or two of not being relevant in the major spaces of web and
> mobile will only see this worsen. I've had to go to HTML5 over the last few
> months because JFX just isn't ready. Another couple of months and I'll be
> so heavily invested in HTML5 based solutions that I won't be able to
> justify coming back.
> Finally, if we didn't need a large corporation backing/financing the main
> components of this thing then JFX would have been built by the community
> years ago. If Oracle is only looking at this platform as some sort of
> glorified 3D charting gimmick, then the community won't get the under-swell
> of momentum it needs to get past the tipping point where it just grows by
> itself.
> The attitude needs to be "if you build it, they will come". Currently it
> looks like "when they come they can then build it". Can anyone actually see
> that working?
> Without web and/or mobile you're fishing for a community without having
> any bait. No community means no one to build the tools needed to then grow
> it, no one pushing IDEs to support it, no one making frameworks others can
> leverage. Which of course is a cyclic spiral into obscurity.
> As I said I dont doubt your commitment to this platform but I do now doubt
> Oracle's. I want to be wrong - tell us how and when JavaFX is going to be
> relevant to any significant space or sector.



+100 on Daniel Zwolenski comments. I wish JavaFX to be the platform of
choice for RIA but right now with the current state of affairs I don't see
that coming.


-- 
Pedro Duque Vieira