To adopt or not to adopt?
I wasn't around in the early days of AWT and its evolution to Swing, but I imagine some of the same growing pains that existed then are being experienced today by the JavaFX pioneers. Here's a series of blogs from a JavaFX user who describes his efforts to convert or upgrade his JavaFX 2.2 application to the version of JavaFX that ships with Java 8, whatever it's being called.
I try to stay somewhat aware of JavaFX by reading this JavaFX weekly update. Though often sounding like a paid advertisement for someone's nearly-commercial venture, it is usually sprinkled with useful tutorials and JavaFX tidbits.
Speaking of Java 8 and JavaFX' maturity, I was casually wondering, "Are we there yet?" with JavaFX. Is JavaFX done or nearly done in Java 8? How many more blogs will be written by programmers struggling to update their JavaFX app to the latest version? I searched the 'net but didn't find much on JavaFX maturity, future development goals, etc. I did find Oracle's article outlining the JavaFX development roadmap, but there's not a whole lot of real news there about what the future might bring. I also found this somewhat dismissive article, declaring JavaFX dead on arrival. Too soon?
I want to like JavaFX. The framework is significantly updated, giving programmers more flexibility and updated tools to construct GUIs that look fresher, but I don't want to be continually rewriting code to work with the latest release. I think I'll wait a bit longer, perhaps until Java 8 matures and the way ahead for JavaFX becomes clearer. If I doze off while I wait for JavaFX to become reasonably mature, someone please wake me when it's there.