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Java SDK 1.5 'Tiger' Beta Finally Released
kingkola writes "Finally, after about two years of development, the Beta for Java SDK 1.5, aka Tiger, has been released. Features added in this edition include generics support, autoboxing of primitives, syntactic sugar for loops, enumerated types, variable arguments, sharing of memory between multiple VMs and a bunch of other bugfixes, enchancements, etc."
Yay, finally some proper java support for IPv6 in windows. Im not an IPv6 zeaolot or anything but its great to be able to write (careful) java.net code using generic InetAddresses and be pretty sure that it will work regardless of which version of IP your network is using.
It bothers me when I read statements like this. Maybe Java is slower than C -- it really depends on what you are doing with each language. For example, heavy duty graphics are not going to fly in Java. However, the portability that a language like Java has, the ease that it can be implemented and the support that it is gaining/has gained in the corporate world makes it a solid competitor.
Every language out there has its own advantages and weakensses. C is fast. It is powerful. The gaming industry will probably always continue to use it unless something exceedingly better comes along.
Java is stable. It is secure. It is very easy to code. Web developers and businesses looking to get multiple systems working together quickly and efficiently will continue to use that.
I don't pretend to be an expert, but from what I've seen, Java is definitely a good thing to have around.
That said, you do give C# much too much credit for "innovation." Microsoft may have a monopoly on a lot of things, but innovation ain't one of them.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Bollocks to that. C# copied generics from C++ (which likely copied it from somewhere else) and so did Java. And they both (C# and Java) got it wrong and missed the point.
Java didn't have this before? LOL
Lack of enumerated types in Java has been a real pain in the ass as was lack of typedef.
Memory sharing between VMs is not so easy to do when you have umpteen platforms to support. Much easier when you have one like in .net.
What .net lacks however is more substantial. There is no API in .net for doing O/R mapping such as JDO or CMP (belch). There is no API for distributed clustered components like EJB session beans. MSMQ is only usable in the Microsoft world. JMS queues can generally be used to integrate with legacy systems. Java has a bunch of great open source tools for it like Eclipse and all its plugins not to mention the Jakarta project. .net has bugger all for a developers' community, unless you consider Microsoft's astroturfing a vibrant community.
Finally .net lacks real credibility in the enterprise. The company that I work for (biggest consulting shop in North America) has a strategy of using .net for quick several week hack jobs but the real projects are always done with J2EE.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
The type checking is much weaker thus introducing new potential holes for error to slip through.
In collections, generics make type checking much stronger. They allow you to find casting problems at compile time instead of run time by not boxing things to Object and back. This also gives a huge speed increase (about 300% in my tests).
When I first learnt Java, I was so excited about the write once read anywhere functionality but many language features (or the lack thereof?) simply bugged me. Then I discovered C# and was happy to have found a usable Java - until I saw the probs Mono is facing porting .NET, particularly System.Windows.Forms, to Unix ... and the fact that they would always have toplay catch up, with no big company to support them (IBM, Sun and other Linux/Open source backers already have a huge stake in Java)
When I read about the proposed features for Java 1.5, I knew i could stick with Java for the long term. Good news!
Thus you have a lot more choice. You could be using Java on Mac OS X, Tomcat and PostgreSQL to power your website, or you could be using IBM mainframes with WebLogic and an Oracle backend.
With
Because Java has freely available, industrial strength implementations on dozens of platforms. If you use it, you aren't locked in to deploying on any particular OS or hardware. (BTW, don't forget gcj in your list of "free" alternatives.)
I hope that helped clear things up...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Microsoft has it REALLY easy, and is cut way too much slack, when it comes to development environments and languages. They control the operating system and the hardware specifications and compliance. And, they have done so for well over a decade.
Java is truly platform independent, which is a huge challenge. That challenge was met with a well designed language that operated slowly. However, between 1.4 and 1.5 there are substantially speed increases in the VM which bring it up to par with the fastest languages available.
When you think about developing applications you need to consider many things other than pure technology:
..the list goes on.
- Who will be around in 5-10 years (both MS tech and Java tech will)
- Access to developers (while MS is the clear winner in the US, this is not so in other countries, where even gov'ts are against MS)
- Vendor independence and support (this is clearly in favor of Java)
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
I find it hard to imagine that anyone is still using Swing these days unless they are locked in to it,
SWT doesn't come with a MVC approach as Swing does. Besides, you'll have to deallocate your GUI resources with SWT yourself.
SWT is the future of Java GUIs
That's a very bold prediction. SWT is a valid alternative in some cases. Before picking a GUI one should think a bit about which toolkit is best-suited for the job. But in no way is SWT always the right choice.
Are you serious??
You should try to do some netowrk programming, say for example real time analysis of netowrk packets, see if java can handle a gigabit network...I didnt think so.
I work for Yahoo. Many of our web servers are powered by Java, and they're fast enough for us. Are you suggesting that your network performance needs are higher that frickin' Yahoo's?!?
I do freely admit that we don't use Java for the super-high-volume stuff like My Yahoo and Mail. But we're Yahoo. Even our low-volume properties are high volume. Java is fast enough to serve a lot of purposes around here.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Yes, I know that we're locked in to MS OS and server, but given the incredible productivity increase, this is a small price to pay.
Vendor lock-in is never a small price to pay. From now on your project will be dependant on one and only one vendor, unless you're willing to completely re-write it from scratch one day. As IDEs evolve much quicker from every vendor except Microsoft, you'll be disappointed when you can't use the future version of Eclipse or JBuilder or whatever when it far surpasses Visual Studio. When a new useful free library pops up for Java, which happens all the time, you can't use it. You're stuck on a new platform with less features, less free tools, and less support for the foreseable future.
Developers: We can use your help.
Absolutely, competition is good. On the other hand I think Java itself was a good motivation for developing .Net. I don't think MS would have been as eager to put development and research resources into it otherwise.
.Net support in eclipse.
This is what competition is about. MS already has C# 2.0 designed (which sports many of the features introduced/present in jdk1.5) and no doubt they'll start marketing that in a couple of months. It's a technological arms race. Of course the big question is which of the two will make the first move to support the other. My guess is that they will let IBM do the hard work. Already there is some
Jilles