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Java SDK 1.5 'Tiger' Beta Finally Released

Posted by simoniker on from the mmm-syntactic-sugar dept.

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."

4 of 602 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by jimbolaya · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Java is probably the most popular language today; undoubtedly within the top 5. And the Java-is-slow-C-is-fast myth is just that...a myth. Dynamic recompilation (HotSpot) in modern Java Virtual Machines can actually make Java as fast or faster than C. And forget not that you can write a slow program in any language, C included.

    What Java is is a memory hog. "Hello World" can easily consume a megabyte of RAM. The shared memory will help this situation. (Incidentally, the shared memory idea was originally developer by Apple for Mac OS X. Apple worked with Sun, and donated code, to make it universal).

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    There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.

  2. About time too by DrXym · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This finally puts Java the language onto the same level as c#. While most of the syntax changes amount to sugar (the compiled code being the same), it is still welcom to see a proper enum at last. And things like generics should make it considerably less tedious to walk through collections (a bane of Java development).


    Another change that caught my eye was a skinnable theme for JFC called Synth. I wonder if this will help Java capture some of the kewl market for media players etc.


    I also see the beta is being made available for 64-bit Linux.


    As a platform, Java is still miles ahead of c#. But I sometimes wonder if the message is lost amongst all the specifications and implementations of specifications. The .NET strategy has gotten some ill-deserved 'buzz' from managers who've heard the spiel without quite understanding the implications if they go that route (i.e. lock-in). Someone in Suns marketing department should produce a massive wallchart detailing everything Java can do, every major solution for it and arrows showing how they all join together and then mail it out to every CEO / CTO in the country.

  3. Saves loads of code by cerberusss · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What is great about this, is that this saves loads of code. Lots of explicit typecasts can be left out now, there is a very short-handed for-loop, you can import constants, etc. etc.

    I played with the alpha and gave a presentatation about it at my employer. Lots of people were enthousiastic.

    Plug: java-1.5_new_features_en_v2.ppt

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    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  4. Just a Question for everybody: by nberardi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't want to start a flame war, but do you think that the pressure of .Net pushed some of these features through that Sun seemed to be holding off on for the longest time.

    Such as enums, generics, boxing, foreach loop, etc.

    Just a question that I have had, because I never heard anything about these features comming into Java until after .Net made it's comming out in 2002.