Geek rant
I've been trying to build a *VERY SIMPLE* chat client and corresponding *VERY SIMPLE* chat server, in Java, just to get my programming legs back under me after, at this point, over three years of being incapable of coding. I'm getting the cobwebs out and scraping off rust, applying some fresh primer and paint in places that need it, and I'm almost at a point where I might consider myself a hobby programmer again. But I digress...
All I wanted was a simple display where data from the server would be displayed in typical terminal manner, that is: new data at the bottom, everything scrolls up, the new data automatically scrolls the rest so that you can always see the new stuff. This is how terminals have worked since BEFORE DOS... yet somehow it is a complicated thing to implement in Java. No simple setAutoScroll method, somehow the getHeight method fails as input to a manual scroll call, and examples using addAdjustmentListener work, but never allow the user to scroll back to see anything.
The point wasn't to build a nice looking chat system, the chat system is only there as a skeleton for more complicated data transfer, and the end product won't even be using the basic Java+Swing components, so the more time I spend on making this *VERY SIMPLE* client just work is just more time wasted. Not that the whole project couldn't be considered a waste of time for certain values of 'waste', but I was really looking for fun not frustration.
And I mean come on, computers have had displays that acted this way since the 70s, but Java doesn't provide one that works out-of-the-box? Please.
All I wanted was a simple display where data from the server would be displayed in typical terminal manner, that is: new data at the bottom, everything scrolls up, the new data automatically scrolls the rest so that you can always see the new stuff. This is how terminals have worked since BEFORE DOS... yet somehow it is a complicated thing to implement in Java. No simple setAutoScroll method, somehow the getHeight method fails as input to a manual scroll call, and examples using addAdjustmentListener work, but never allow the user to scroll back to see anything.
The point wasn't to build a nice looking chat system, the chat system is only there as a skeleton for more complicated data transfer, and the end product won't even be using the basic Java+Swing components, so the more time I spend on making this *VERY SIMPLE* client just work is just more time wasted. Not that the whole project couldn't be considered a waste of time for certain values of 'waste', but I was really looking for fun not frustration.
And I mean come on, computers have had displays that acted this way since the 70s, but Java doesn't provide one that works out-of-the-box? Please.