SWT and the Doctor

I generally don't heed the endless people moaning about Swing in the front end. I've done a fair amount of it (using it in my current project) and find it reasonably nice to work with. It's a lot simplier then coding up a web front end in HTML/JSP/Taglibs/JSF/Struts and dealing with Requests and Sessions. [sigh].

It's not that slow and its not that ugly. If you use a different L&F such as JGoodies Looks, things become even more pleasant. It's really not that bad (or hard to learn) especially if you take the time to learn the mighty GridBagLayout.

Anyhoo, SWT has been in my TODOs techs to play with. I started to tinker with it and came across a nice tutorial at IBM developerWorks. Although I've used Eclipse for some time, I'm suprised how well the example program actually looks. I might put both feet into the SWT arena. Hmmm.


If you have access to the new Doctor Who (TV show currently playing in the UK, but floating in the ether), I would wholeheartedly recommend watching it. It has all the special effects that today's technology can provide but maintains the classic cheap-and-tacky aliens of yester-decade with an excellent story line. I actually found 'The Empty Child' fairly scary. I can't believe I watched this show as a child.

Hmm.. I guess that explains a lot.