Our vision

Back in 1970 when UNIX was conceived, assembly language was usually the lowest one could afford to go. In the absence of serious speed or memory concerns, it was far more efficient to write programs in a high-level language like FORTRAN or C.

Things have changed.

With today's massive software projects, object-oriented languages are the lowest one can afford to go. Memory concerns are mostly a thing of the past, so in the absence of serious speed concerns, it is far more efficient to write programs inside an application framework.

The driving vision behind the JX Application Framework is to provide such an application framework: a broad, solid system within which one can quickly and easily build applications by only having to write the application specific code.

Since one company cannot do this alone, part of our vision is the hope that the JX Application Framework will act as a nucleation site for an ever-expanding library of code. We therefore encourage everybody who uses the JX Application Framework to try to write reusable libraries that they can make available to others. The source distribution has been designed to allow such 3rd party libraries to integrate seamlessly. This design is documented in the file doc/Makefiles.txt.

Even though one person cannot single-handedly develop a large system, The Mythical Man-Month makes a strong argument that large projects are best guided and maintained by a single person, the system architect. This person serves as a switchboard for bugs and suggestions and as a moderator for discussions. In addition, while many people may contribute code because, for example, it is their specialty, or they needed it first, a single architect insures that the result is clean, consistent, and elegant. This guarantees that the system is not only powerful but also a pleasure to use. If you plan to release code for use with the JX Application Framework, we would therefore appreciate it if you discuss the design with us. This will help us understand what you are providing and can help you to produce a more useful and robust library.