Investigate porting to a different language

[vdye]

When this version of Rank Panda was created, Java was a substantially better choice than the previous language (Python): .jar files are more portable than a collection of Python scripts, required only a JRE installation (rather than the whole Python language), and Swing was a more powerful GUI library. However, that doesn't mean Java is still the ideal choice - it does require a separate install to run, and the Swing GUI looks painfully outdated.

Some criteria to consider when looking for a new language:

• Has strong GUI APIs, particularly for drawing shapes
• Has a good PDF export library (PDFBox is fantastic, any replacement would ideally be as well-supported as that)
• Builds standalone executables, can easily build for Windows/Mac/Linux (x86 & ARM)
• It's fairly modern, but has a good support structure and stability (we don't want to pick something so new it'll be abandoned in 2 years, but we also don't want to use C)

Some options:

• Typescript/JS (Electron for GUIs)
• C# (Avalonia for GUIs)
• Go (??? for GUIs)
• stick with Java, but upgrade to e.g. JavaFX for the GUI

[vdye]

Upon further reflection, Java is probably sufficient for our needs. There's more we could do to improve it, too (use a newer framework like JavaFX, package with a platform-specific installer, etc.). This can be re-opened if we ever run into hard barriers as a result of using Java, though.