More Issues
This past week has been very busy, though not as busy because of Labor Day which was much needed. We have finally decided to use JavaFX instead of Visual Studio to create a local app for Professor Yorgey. I have not used JavaFX since my freshman year which was over four years ago. This means I had to redownload everything and learn this program basically from nothing. Installation of JavaFX and deciding which IDE to use has been frustrating.
VS Code is very flexible and easy to use with its command palette and extensions that you can install, but sometimes it lacks certain capabilities. In this case it was JavaFX not having all capabilities and a SceneBuilder extension not working for some reason. Since VS Code is not language-specific, the interface for programs can also be troublesome to work around but most of the time it does a good job. An upside is that it includes being able to create a JavaFX project through Maven, which provides the files and project structure for you, which is extremely convenient.
Eclipse is somewhat not a very friendly interface as there is too much customizability in my opinion; users can get easily lost trying to configure libraries and settings. Trying to get JavaFX into Eclipse through its software extension store was like walking through a maze. Walkthroughs online were outdated so the files that I would need to download were not the same in the software store, and at one point the installation failed due to issues with the download so I ultimately gave up on Eclipse.
IntelliJ is the IDE I am deciding to go with. It works with the Maven build without any issues importing packages and classes and the SceneBuilder installation works with it as well, so it is the only IDE that fully works. Hopefully there won’t be too many issues that arise as I start to add more to the project but I have a feeling that that won’t last long. We were hoping that we would have some kind of demo working for our first weekly meeting but that will have to be pushed back due to all of these issues, most of which were on me since I was taking the lead on creating a skeleton of a project so that it would be easier for others to get started.