The creation of J bindings to OpenGL also offers potential spin-off and enhancement projects. For example, while it may be faster to develop graphics applications in an interpreted environment, applications with real-time needs may still require a compiled executable to meet performance demands. A reasonable project would therefore be to write a translator that would take a J script file and generate a C or C++ file which would perform the same operations but would be compiled for optimal runtime performance.
Another spin-off project might be to create a GUI environment for object modeling in OpenGL. Such a development tool would certainly save time over the trial ... wait ... result sequences involved in using C and C++ to create models, and would also abstract away the user’s need for knowledge of the J syntax to utilize the bindings to OpenGL for modeling.
In the future, perhaps even more sophisticated graphics APIs could be utilized interactively through the creation of new J bindings. In particular, Performer and its ability for multiprocessing poses interesting questions about how J might handle multiple process graphical applications.