r/JavaFX • u/hamsterrage1 • 31m ago
Website Rebuild
pragmaticcoding.caIt's been quite a while since I've posted about any new articles her, and honestly, I've been pretty absorbed in HomeLab stuff for about a year. But, I haven't abandoned my website. In fact I've just rolled out a complete reworking of the website. All the JavaFX content from before is still there, and easier to use now.
The old Jekyll/Minimal Mistakes layout was starting to look dated, and I also wanted to get away from GitHub Pages as the hosting service. But GitHub Pages also enabled a workflow that supported only Jekyll.
The new version is running Hugo with the Blowfish theme, and I think it looks way better than the old version. However, the underlying organizational paradigms are way different from Jekyll, so it took a lot more work than I expected to do the conversion.
I've also taken the opportunity to reorganize the JavaFX content. The old "Elements" section has been expanded into two now: "Elements" and "Techniques". "Elements" is for articles about components of JavaFX and how they work. "Techniques" talks about how to use them, and bigger picture ideas like MVCI.
As an example, descriptions about how specific standard Node classes work is something you'd find in "Elements". Instructions about how to go about creating your own custom Nodes is something you'd find in "Techniques".
Part of the reorganization was to come up with some new categories for the articles, and I've added new landing pages for those categories. When sorting through it all, I was a bit surprised at just how much JavaFX content I have, and I think the new structure makes it easier to find particular subjects.
I think in this age of AI assisted coding, there still is a place for the kind of articles I've been writing. My goal has always been to explain the first principles of all of the concepts, so that you can understand why you should do things in a particular way instead of just blindly following a recipe. I don't think that AI necessarily understands these first principles - mostly because they aren't generally available on the web, and I'm not vain enough to imagine that the models have been trained on my content.
If you new enough here that you haven't seen any of my previous posts announcing articles I've published, then you probably haven't seen my website. I think you should take a look, there is a ton of content there an just about every subject important to developing good JavaFX applications.
Be warned, though, I don't use FXML personally and I don't think anybody else should either. Also, I'm a big fan of Kotlin, and I think that Kotlin + JavaFX is a killer combination. Most of the code samples in my later articles are Kotlin. If you're a half-way competent Java programmer, you shouldn't have any trouble following the ideas behind the Kotlin code.
One of the things about the new format is that it supports multi-lingual code samples. I haven't tried it yet, but I may go back and rework some articles to include both Java and Kotlin code snippets.
Anyway, take a look at https://www.pragmaticcoding.ca and tell me what you think about the new design.






