GUI is learned late in the game with Java. Do you think this is helpful or harmful and why?
I think learning a GUI is important, but it is helpful to wait until later to teach it. Speaking from experience, to a novice programmer, a GUI can seem like a monumental task. I recall looking at some Swing code early on when I was learning Java and feeling incredibly overwhelmed. I think this is because it encapsulates many Java-specific concepts that can be hard to grasp for a new Java users.
Why do think that coding the Swing elements in Java would be more difficult compared to some other languages?
Swing, like Java in general, is very ‘wordy’. It uses a lot of terminology which can make it difficult to grasp for many, including myself. I think this makes it particularly difficult for some. However, I think it is also a lot easier than other GUI frameworks because it is a native Java library, meaning that a new programmer can just use it readily without having to track down other files and dependencies.