Should I use Java for a custom Swing component designed for a clojure app?

Question

I want a simple timeline component (like in video editing software) for a clojure/seesaw app and I am wondering if it is a good approach to implement this directly with clojure and seesaw or if I should write it in java and make my clojure wrapper around it.

Or more generally: is a functional programming language optimal for writing UI widgets? I cannot imagine doing that without a lot of state involved. And wasn't OO invented for UI-development in the first place?

Answer 1

You could go either way. On Overtone, we've built a number of custom graphical components directly in Clojure with Seesaw. Many times, an atom and (seesaw.core/canvas) is sufficient for this kind of thing.

Depending on how fancy you're going to get, one reason to do it in Clojure is you can extend Seesaw's protocols (selection, binding, etc) to the new widget so it works seamlessly with Seesaw. Another consideration is whether your widget needs to make use of Clojure data from other parts of the app. This will be much cleaner from Clojure than Java.

That said, if you're comfortable in Swing/Java, you can do it there and Seesaw will be perfectly happy to work with a custom widget built in Java. Good luck!