I’ve been using JMeter 2.2 for recording and running a couple of load tests on our new server. Now a lot of people are suggesting that Swing is ready for the desktop, at least for Linux. Well, my experience with JMeter on OS X is far from stellar:
- copy/paste/etc are not compatible with OS X defaults, but use the *shudder* Windows bindings
- there is no undo
- I can’t get the data copy/pasted into other applications (textmate)
- you never know if jmeter has saved any test script, there is no feedback, and I’ve lost a couple of hours worth of proxied test script generation
- it is a true memory hog
As far as I can see, JMeter is a showcase of everything people expect from a Java desktop application. There is a whole world open for new and better open source projects to build a decent load testing application.
That j.l. article is more about Java 6, right? But the funny thing is that Swing on Apple’s JVM has had a “native” L&F at least as accurate as Sun Java 6′s (on Windows and GNOME) for a very long time. I doubt if Apple’s version 6 runtime will be much of an improvement over previous versions, but I guess if I really cared I could install the beta to find out. Anyway, you make a good point here. Typical Java programmers (API writers and users) are sooooo far behind in good interfaces; having achieved a decent visual representation, they declare victory even though freaking keyboard bindings and the clipboard still can not be expected to work reliably!
Even if I select the native OS X l’n'f it just seems sort of off… and it is still dog slow, and still consumes hogs of memory.