4 Benefits to OpenGL Programming in J

The environment presented by the OpenGL bindings allows for faster graphics programming and development by increasing interactivity. When graphics commands are issued to the J system they are immediately interpreted and executed. The programmer is therefore allowed to experiment with translation values or red-green-blue-alpha values (or any other graphics parameter) and perceive the results of his or her changes relatively quickly. In other words, the graphics state updates as the programmer issues commands inside the J environment. As a result, the programmer immediately sees the effect of his or her actions without having to compile, link, and test the application changes as required when working in the C or C++ development environments. Even with the convenience of make scripts that automate the build process, building the C or C++ executable to evaluate the effects of added OpenGL commands is time consuming and still requires the programmer to run the freshly built executable.

As for the selection of the OpenGL graphics programming libraries, OpenGL offers a robust set of utilities and commands suitable to a wide range of two and three dimensional graphical programming endeavors. OpenGL has also evolved as a standard amongst 3D graphics programming languages and has been ported to and extensive variety of platforms and operating systems. In any case, the creation of J bindings for OpenGL certainly does not exclude or prevent the creation of J bindings for other graphics programming libraries in the future.