Java2 SDK v. 1.4 Released

pangloss writes: "Yay: XML, built-in Perl-ish regex, jdbc 3.0, asserts, IPv6, lots of other goodies. Release notes and incompatibilities. And I think this means I can use my wheel-mouse in NetBeans without that extra module ;) Download it here." WilsonSD adds: "There are many cool new features including a New I/O package, an Assert Facility and enhanced performance." Some other random Java notes: O'Reilly has an essay about why you won't see any open source J2EE implementations, and Kodak has filed a patent-infringement claim against Sun regarding Java.

Comments

Patent titles

[jeti]

The article says nothing about the nature of
the supposedly infringed patents. Here's their
titles:

US05206951
Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types

US05421012
Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types

US05226161
Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types

Java Secure Socket Extension

[srichman]

The Java Secure Socket Extension has provided TLS/SSL support to Java for a long time, and is now part of 1.4.

???

Re:Open Source Java VM & class libraries

[mlinksva]

Look at the bottom of the classpath page for a list of open source VMs that work with classpath (a free core (i.e., java.* and a few others) class library). All works in progress. I expect that mono and/or portable.net will quickly outpace free java projects. The JDK is a case where the availability of good enough gratis software has seriously hampered the momentum of libre competition. Netscape 4.x is another such case.

Ironic/NBIO

[srichman]

I used to write large-scale multithreaded network servers, where somthing like three to four hundred threads could be running at any given moment inside the server. Java's class library made this really quite easy, and it's syntax is pleasant enough to work with.

It's kinda ironic that you should say this, since threads are the wrong way to write "large-scale" network servers, and since Java 1.4 finally gives us non-blocking IO APIs to implement things the right way. (The NBIO APIs in 1.4 are, incidentally, largely a product of the work of the fellow behind the second link I gave.)

Re:My take on JDK 1.4

[Speare]

They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.

If you have a foo.bar.URI class, and the core has a java.net.URI class, you can still use yours.

You can:

1. specifically name the package at the usage (messy),
2. specifically include only the java.net classes you want, one by one, rather than including java.net.* (inconvenient),
3. or just clarify which URI class should be used in the imports specifically:
   • import foo.bar.*;
     import java.net.*;
     import foo.bar.URI; /* hides java.net.URI */

Existing code does not need to be recompiled, since bytecode always explicitly names classes always, but existing code does potentially need to be fixed if recompiled, as the default results of the imports will change. This is a pretty small and common occurrence with a new API set.

Re:skeptical for the desktop

[TheAJofOZ]

Sun is like Microsoft - they make as many features as possible, worry about the bugs later and let hardware catch up to overcome their crippling defects caused by overzealous and misinformed OOD.

Okay, I can't take this any more - Java is not slow or buggy and can produce applications that are indistinguishable from C/C++ applications. The proof of this is simple - rewind the clock back a year to MacWorld where WorldBook Encyclopedia was demoed as part of the keynote with everyone watching and they were all impressed. Months later I was informed by the "head Java dude" at Apple on his Australian tour that WorldBook is completely written in Java - but noone knew.

Most people think that Java is slow, buggy and doesn't look platform native because they assume that anything that is fast, stable and looks and feels platform native wasn't written in Java. It's even cooler though, because the "write once, run everywhere" of Java actually works if you write good code). Sure there are some things that Java can't do that you need native code modules to handle but that facility is available.

The worst thing is that young programmers are led to think that Sun's code is actually *good* which spreads their poor, inefficient form to the next generations.

Java's not perfect, but I seriously don't think that it's Java that corrupts young programmers. You can write good code in almost any language - I see an awful lot of really bad Java code written by C programmers but I'm not about to claim that C is corrupting old programmers.

Headless at last - bye bye XVfb

[Taurine]

My favourite new feature is that lightweight components can now be run in headless mode - see

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/awt/AWTC ha nges.html#headless

You have to set a property to true:

-Djava.awt.headless=true

as a switch when running the VM for example. Then you can generate server-side graphics on Unix without having to run XVfb. This has been an annoyance for some time, as you had to have different deployment rules depending on your target OS, as NT always has a graphical environment taking up resources whether you want it or not, so it wasn't an issue there.

The upshot is that you can now use java.awt.Image.BufferedImage as an image source in servlets that generate dynamic images, instead of java.awt.Frame, which always seemed wrong. It uses less resources too, as it doesn't have to do a context-switch to your X server to create images!
Hey, there are lots of great new features in this new release, but that is the first one that made life easier for me.

Re:Security export rules

[JohnA]

There is already a clean room, open source (BSD License) implementation of the JCE. It's called Cryptix, and simply put is one of the best libraries ever written for Java.

I don't trust black box cryptography... especially when Sun goes the extra mile to obfuscate their default implementation of the JCE crypto modules.

Re:My pet hates with Java

[_underSCORE]

I fail to see how a declaration "String str = null" is any safer than a declaration "String str".

You've used this serveral times as an example. You're right, assigning a string to null is not safer than leaving it uninitialized. However, that just gets around the 'uninitialized variable' error from the compiler. You should initialize it with something meaningful, or at least "". That would be more safe, and would be what the compiler wants you to do. This error has saved my butt more times than I care to remember, so don't knock it.
If you want to use variable arguments, pass in a vector or a list. There are ways to make java do what you want to do, they might not be like those in C or C++.