Java Champion and Rock Star Adam Bien, author of "Real World Java EE Patterns," shared his views on JavaFX with Janice J. Heiss in interview published in January 2010. Getting right to the heart of the subject, he identified the inclusion of "good skinnable components" in version JavaFX 1.2 as a welcome improvement. "JavaFX requires writing less code while it integrates very well with existing business logic written in Java. A reason to go the JavaFX route is better maintainability, and faster development with less code," he said.

Even so, Bien continued, JavaFX is not for developers with an aversion to learning new technology, language or components. Still, he added, "Most developers love innovation. If you have a team of passionate developers, JavaFX is just perfect for you." Bien explained to Heiss why he feels the scene graph is the "skeleton" of a JavaFX application on which one can actually map a meta-tree structure onto any technology. Further, he said, the fact that the tree-like structure consists of recursive nodes only distinguishes it from Swing and enables JavaFX to apply transformations on Nodes on any level as opposed to Swing, where no explicit transformations are available. A further strength, he noted, is that the scene graph can be accessed and manipulated in any JVM-language, like JavaScript, Scala, JRuby, or Groovy.

Bien also shared his views on the JavaFX Production Suite Authoring Tool. On this topic he said, that while the Production Suite is beneficial for the initial import of the assets and greatly simplifies the designer-developer collaboration, it is a limitation that an iterative developer-designer round-trip, however, will only be possible with naming and coding conventions. "I don't believe in the idea of a single, perfect, visual tool - this has never worked well in the past. A pragmatic combination of tools, however, will greatly simplify the development of JavaFX applications," he asserted. While JavaFX initially lacked a good IDE support, this was fixed with the introduction of NetBeans 6.8, so now the editing experience is very comparable to Java, Bien said.

Heiss also queried Bien on the most superfluous GoF patterns in JavaFX Script patterns, which he identified as the Command pattern, and then went on to comment on the Strategy pattern, the Template pattern, the Adapter pattern, and the Model View Controller architectural pattern, which he labeled "obsolete," having been replaced by the Model View Presenter.

Even so, he concluded, "The ideas and solutions of the GoF patterns are still valid in JavaFX. Most of the structural patterns, however, can be directly implemented with the built-in language features. There is no need for additional ceremony or artifacts."

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Heiss's interview

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