Swing Setup 101: What are the must-do steps to get my Java environment ready for Swing? Any IDEs or tools that are beginner-friendly?
I would just use whatever IDE you normally use for Java. I personally use Intellij, but I’ve also used many others. Try a few out and see which one you like best.
There are some IDEs that let you drag and drop to create a UI. I generally don’t recommend those until you really understand what’s going on behind the scenes, because otherwise it’s hard to change the default behavior or debug when something goes wrong.
Learning Resources Galore: Can you recommend some killer tutorials, books, or online courses that teach Swing from the ground up? Bonus points for resources with practical examples!
My official answer is this tutorial:
But that’s admittedly pretty condensed and high level. I also remember the official Oracle tutorials (previously Sun tutorials) being a good resource:
Swing Like a Boss: Are there any secret Swing handshake… I mean, best practices or design patterns I should know? My code wants to be both efficient and easy to understand in the future.
The best resource for taking Swing to the next level that I’ve encountered is a book called Filthy Rich Clients: Filthy Rich Clients: Developing Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java™ Applications [Book]
They used to have a snazzy website to go along with the book, but it looks like the domain has expired and was taken over by somebody else. They do still have a GitHub repo of examples: GitHub - romainguy/filthy-rich-clients: Samples for the book Filthy Rich Clients
Newbie No-Nos: What are the common pitfalls that trip up Swing beginners, and how can I avoid them like a coding ninja?
I’d say the most common pitfalls are:
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Using inheritance over composition too much. This is exacerbated by the fact that the official tutorials use a ton of inheritance, even when they don’t need to. This isn’t the end of the world but is something that I think separates newer coders from more experienced folks.
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Relying too much on drag and drop editors. I alluded to this above, but I’ve seen many people fall into a trap of thinking drag and drop is easier, only to realize that it makes things harder down the road.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about being a newbie. The only way to learn is by coding, so I wouldn’t spend a ton of time obsessing over making it perfect from the beginning.
Real-World Inspiration: Any chance you could point me towards some example projects or open-source apps that use Swing? Seeing Swing in action would be a huge help.
Swing is interesting because it’s often used in places you might not see. A decade ago I was writing Swing for a living for the US government, but you wouldn’t see my stuff in the wild. Swing is pretty old at this point, but many industries cling to older technology so it’s far from dead.
I did find this list of open-source projects that use Swing that might be worth checking out: java-swing-applications · GitHub Topics · GitHub
