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."

Comments

For more information check out theserverside.com

[alenm]

Link to discussion on TheServerSide.com

Re:Why?

[jimbolaya]

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).

IPv6 for windows finally

[goodbye_kitty]

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.

Re:IPv6 for windows finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Why finally? For Java to support IPv6 on Windows, MSFT had to support it first and that didn't happen until Windows XP SP1.
Now that being said, the really cool part about Java supporting IPv6 on windows is that it actually makes it much, much easier for developers to add support for IPv6 on Windows. You see, Microsoft didn't provide a dual stack implementation which means an IPv6 socket can not talk to an IPv4 host. It's stupid and contrary to what the RFCs strongly recommend. So if you're a .Net developer and want to support IPv6, you're in trouble as you have to rewrite your application to handle both kind of sockets, not too hard for client side, much more of a pain on the server side.
Now, with Java, none of that, a Socket is a Socket and that's it. To make it better, chances are your Java application doesn't need to be modified, or even recompiled! Imagine that: your application was already IPv6 enabled and you didn't know it.

Re:Why?

[Jim_Hawkins]

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.

Re:Too little, too late

[sporty]

generics support

C# innovated this, and already has this in the spec

C++ had this way before. Next...

autoboxing of primitives

C# innovated this, already implemented years ago

Ruby.. next...

syntactic sugar for loops

"foreach": C# innovated and already has this, implemented years ago

Perl...

enumerated types

Java didn't have this before? LOL

No, and not always very useful. It's just neat.

and a bunch of other bugfixes, enchancements

Bugfixes in a language? WTF?

In the VM or in the java support classes library, i.e. j2ee.jar

Re:Too little, too late

[kinga]

Grennis: C# innovated!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Too little, too late

[jimbolaya]

C# was clearly inspired by Java, so if Java takes back a few ideas from C#, I say its fantastic. And recall that they each are based, in syntax, on C, and in concept, on Smalltalk. Language designers learn and borrow from each other. All is good in the world.

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.

Re:Too little, too late

[LordK2002]

C# did not "innovate" any of these. It might well have implemented them before Java, but most of them were available in various programming languages long before C# arrived on the scene.

About time too

[DrXym]

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.

Re:About time too

[jlusk4]

The Java language, VM, libraries and protocols (RMI, J2EE) are all fully spec'd out. There are *no* proprietary pieces the implementation of which is forbidden by Sun. 3rd parties can implement to their heart's content.

On the other hand, MS always, always, always seems to take care to leave some proprietary poison pill in their work, so you can implement 99% of their offering, but w/out the last 1%, your offering is worth substantially less (if anything at all).

MS-Kerberos is my favorite example: all these bytes are yours, except these two over here. Touch them not.

I think Mono is another case in point: it's an implementation of C# and the VM (yes?) but the .NET libs are off-limits, are they not?

(Consider me trolled. Oh well, it's been a while since I've bitten any hooks.)

John.

Re:About time too

[DrXym]

You're not locked in because there are multiple JVMs and multiple implentations spanning multiple architectures and devices from multiple vendors. You are not compelled to use Sun hardware, nor Sun software if you want to use something else. Many of the core technologies are open specifications with open source implementations.

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 .NET your choices are made for you - Microsoft. Microsoft software on Microsoft operating systems on Microsoft supported platforms. Mono might be suitable for toy apps (not that Kaffe is much better) but it is never going to implement all of the proprietary things that .NET is comprised of.

Re:About time too

[Glock27]

How is java less lock-in than ,NET?

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.)

.Nyet, on the other hand, leaves you with only Windows as a deployment option - it's not at all clear that Mono will be allowed to finish/distribute a complete cross-platform .Net implementation. Many important libraries aren't in the ECMA standards, such as Winforms.

I hope that helped clear things up...

Re:About time too

[severoon]

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the C# vs Java debate.

If you write code in Java, you can run the same compiled class files on any platform. In C#, any code you write MUST run on a Windows-supported platform under Windows, but because every .NET language compiles to the CLA (Common Language Architecture), they are all translated into a single, compatible language before going to bytecode. Meaning, you can interoperate between any .NET language, have C# functions call a C++ function (assuming C++ is a .NET supported language now or someday) and just have it work...no CORBA, no distributed programming, etc. Furthermore, the CLA common language provides stuff like garbage collection so you can neglect free() and delete() in C++ and not worry about memory leaks (just don't compile that code with a non-.NET C++ compiler). The grand vision here is that everyone using .NET is locked into the .NET framework running on a Windows platform. There's nothing open about that.

sev

Re:Too little, too late

[MSBob]

C# innovated this, and already has this in the spec

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.

Code Examples

[Dreamland]

Here's a very nice PDF giving actual code examples of the new language features:


http://www.javasig.com/Archive/lectures/JavaSIG- Ti ger.pdf

Saves loads of code

[cerberusss]

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

Benchmarks

[SashaM]

Actually, 1.5 beta has been available for a few months now, but the link wasn't on the main java.sun.com page.

Here are some highly unscientific benchmarks of startup time I just ran on my Athlon XP 2000+ under Mandrake 9.2:

[sasha@jupiter tmp]$ time -p /usr/java/1.4/bin/java HelloWorld
Hello World!
real 0.30
user 0.22
sys 0.03

[sasha@jupiter tmp]$ time -p /usr/java/1.5/bin/java HelloWorld
Hello World!
real 0.17
user 0.16
sys 0.02

These are relatively consistent over multiple runs.

Re:Benchmarks

[SashaM]

Also here are some snapshots of the new and improved Metal Look&Feel and of the GTK+ Look&Feel. You can also see how much antialiasing of bright text on dark backgrounds has improved from (unreadable) 1.4 to (rather decent) 1.5.

Also, Swing seems to be much more responsive! It is therefore my humble opinion that this release is going rock Java.

Re:"generics"

[PhrostyMcByte]

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).

In Response to C#?

[osewa77]

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!

The good and the ugly

[brett_sinclair]

I really like the new language features (and will use them in about 5 years when our server is upgraded :-().

But Swing is even uglier than before. Metal still looks very old, but now it looks like someone very old with obscene amounts of make-up on.

The GTK+ look is even worse. It doesn't look like GTK+ at all (I'm not even sure whether it's supposed to be GTK1 or GTK2).

Worse: font rendering is abysmal. Buttons and menus are barely readable using the GTK+ emulation L&F. The Java VM still doesn't use Xft/Freetype, which pretty much makes the attempt at GTK+ emulation useless.

Re:"generics"

[oops]

Are we talking about the same thing ? What's safer ? A Java collection that takes *any* object without type-checking, or one that's restricted to a particular type/subtype ? I know which one I'd take.

The compiler performs at 30% of it's former speed ? Not with the 1.5 beta release. Or the pre-release available last month. Or the generics add-in from last year. Have you tried these ?

Finally I've worked in the finance sector for the last 10 years. Nowhere are templates forbidden as suggested above. I'm desperate for these to be widely used to give the run-time object-typing security that Java has lacked in its collections. This is a huge gain in my book.

Re:"generics"

[fab13n]

Is it a troll?

Generic is good, if you're smart enough to use them correctly. Let's take the List example.

The type checking is much weaker thus introducing new potential holes for error to slip through.

Plain wrong. With the current list, if you've got a list of Foobar, then each time you want to extract a Foobar from the list, you have to fool the type system with a (Foobar) cast. If what you extracted was not a Foobar, then you get a runtime error (which is exactly what a type system's supposed to avoid). Symmetrically, if you try to put an integer in a list of widgets, the compiler won't notice. These issues are adressed by polymorphic type systems.

You must make some assumptions about the used classes however verifying the correctness of these assumptions in nearly impossible.

Wrong again: basically, a type is the statically verifyable part of the assumptions you make about a value. Maybe you're confused with dependant type systems, that allow to parameterize a type by a value (e.g. an array by its size), and is indeed often undecidable.

The reusabilty "argument" is rubbish

It wasn't for OO, and it is even more false about generics. Obviously quick and dirty code written by coder with low to average skills is not reusable, because writing reusable code asks a lot of smartness, and smartness can not be provided by a compiler. OTOH, STL in C++ are highly reusable, but very few coders are able to produce a code of such a quality, and noboby knows a way to fix that human issue. Reusability is about few code, written by few wizards, and used by many average coders.

The above mentioned problems create new security holes.

I'd be glad to see any concrete example backing this assertion. Actually, the evilest type system feature is the cast, and genericity is the way to get rid of most of them.

Due to turing completeness of most template/generics systems the compiler is slowed down to 30 percent performance. More evil is that templates push the grammars into the Chomsky-0 type making secure (=100%) correctness checking impossible.

Is this a random association of "sounds-good" term you've seen in a theoretical paper, or some very old and approximative quotes from a lecture during which you played Tetris on your phone?

Turing completeness doesn't lead to "slow downs", it immediately causes complete undecidability. The whole point of a type system IS to be decidable, hence not Turing complete, as opposed to the values. Moreover, templates keep the language in the "context free grammar" category. Last but not least, correctness checking is not related to grammars: grammar is just about parsing.

In old languages like Lisps the use of generics is usually strongly discouraged [...]

You know why it's discouraged? because it doesn't exist! List is dynamically typed, so templates don't make much sens. I guess you're confusing with macros, that are, indeed, Turing complete and can arbitrarily mess up the grammer in unskilled hand.

I've really seldom seen such an accumulation of BS in a single post.

Just a Question for everybody:

[nberardi]

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.

Re:Just a Question for everybody:

[jilles]

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.

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 .Net support in eclipse.

Re:Why?

[iapetus]

Um. That link shows Java as having 11132 projects - the highest number except for C++ (12686) and C (12706). Given Java's big uptake in commercial development and the fact that it hasn't been around and mature for as long as C/C++ (how far back do Sourceforge projects go) I'd say you've not really done much to disprove his claim. Java is certainly one of the most popular languages out there today, and might even be at the top of the heap.

Of course, I understand that Britney Spears is rather popular too...

Excuse me but:

[gargleblast]

1. The type checking is much weaker than what? It is perfectly strong at runtime.
2. Verifying the correctness of any program in any Turing-complete language is in general impossible
3. The reusability "argument" of OOP is rubbish too.
4. The abovementioned problems are nonsense and as such create nothing. In addition, the banking sector is not universally regarded as sensible.
5. You must be thinking of C++ templates which are (1) Turing complete and (2, coincidentally) are a significant burden to the compiler and linker. Java's generics are neither. They are a simple syntactic sugar for type casting. C++ with templates is still LALR(1)/Context-free/Chomsky type 2. Chomsky hierarchy has nothing whatsoever to do with secure correctness checking. If a language is Turing complete, there is in general nothing you can prove about it's programs.
6. In my limited experience with Lisp's authorities, they encourage much and discourage little. Provide a citation please.

Class Data Sharing comes from Apple

[Arkham]

One of the new features, Class Data Sharing, comes as a contribution from Apple. On the Apple Java Page, Apple describes this feature as:

On other platforms, each Java application consumes some system memory, so you might end up using more memory than you need to when running multiple Java applications. Other languages, such as C or C++, solve this problem using what's called shared libraries. Apple developed an innovative new technology that allows Java code to be shared across multiple applications. This reduces the amount of memory that Java applications normally use. And it fits right into Sun's Hot Spot VM, allowing Mac OS X to remain compatible with standard Java. In addition, Apple has given this implementation to Sun so the company can deploy it on other platforms. It's just one example of how Apple supports standards and shares ideas to benefit all.

Pretty cool stuff, and it shows that Sun does accept changes to Java from the outside that are of clear benefit.

Where the value is

[lonb]

While I see people here immediately start debating who gets credit for various aspects of the language and when things came out first -- in hopes of finding which originator is the more powerful geek (MS or SUN), I think the critical point is being missed.

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:
- 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)
..the list goes on.

"enchancements"

[tehcyder]

Is it just me who loves that typo?

About polymorphidm snd subtyping

[fab13n]

Let's state that A <: B means "A is a subtype of B". Now the question is "What do I need as conditions on As and Bs to get A<As> <: B<Bs>". The answer is:

• If one can only read values of type C with A methods, then the relation is covariant, i.e. to get A<As> <: B<Bs> we need As <: Bs.
• If one can only WRITE values of type C with A methods (e.g. pass them as function parameters), then the relation is contravariant, i.e. to get A<As> <: B<Bs> we need Bs <: As. Counter-example:

  Int &lt;: Float
  
  Array&lt;Float&gt; a0= new Array&lt;Float&gt;();
  a0.[0] = 3.14159;
  Array&lt;Int&gt; a1 = a0; // would be legal if the type was covariant
  Int x = a1[0]; // Oops, I've put a float in an int.
  // I shouldn't be allowed to do that without an explicit cast.

• If parameters of such types can be both read and written, then you need both As <: Bs and Bs <: As, i.e. As == Bs. That's what happens with java. If you want your structures to be covariant, you have to forbid their modification (here, forbid to change the cells' contents).

If in some exceptionnal cases you want to enforce subtyping, it's up to you to use casts. But you cannot assume a bogus subtyping relationship without noticing it, therefore the type system did its job.

Re:Someone please make a debian package!

[tyrione]

Why are you stuck on that?

I'm running 1.4.2_03 update 3 on Debian Sid.

Download the Linux.bin self-extracting file. and install as root where you want it to be installed.

First do a chmod 777 on the .bin file as noted by Sun. It will extract a structure as 1.4.2_03/ I don't like that so I just moved it to 1.4.2/

$mv j2sdk1.4.2_03/ j2sdk1.4.2/

Set the pathways for your .profile. and root's as well, and every user who needs access to the tools.

Here are my settings:

#Java SDK 1.4.2 SDK Path Settings JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/SunJava/j2sdk1.4.2/

add JAVA_HOME to your export PATH list.

Your choice of where you want your install directory is your choice. I made everything from Sun under SunJava.

Now as root run update-alternatives. (Man page for more info about the following).

$update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/java java /pathToYourJ2SDK/bin/java 100

Repeat for javah, javac, jdb, javap, jarsigner, java-rmi-cgi keytool, etc underneath the Sun /bin directory.

Then run update-alternatives --all to make sure it has Sun's sdk 1.4.2 set.

Run update-alternatives --config java

$update-alternatives --config java

Make sure its set.

Re:SWT

[harmonica]

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.

Re:an annoying quirk

[derkaas]

You can, however, make use of wildcards to define a covariant inhertiance relationship between ArrayList<Number> and ArrayList<Integer>. We can reconstruct your example to create this relationship:

ArrayList<Integer> s = new ArrayList<Integer>();
ArrayList<? extends Number> t = s; //compiles

Check out this paper for information about this other kinds of variance available in Tiger.

not enough

[ajagci]

These are language fixes that should have happened years ago. The real question is: why did it take Sun so long? Why is the process by which the Java language evolves so severely broken?

And many serious problems remain with the Java language:

• Java genericity has no special support in the runtime, which limits the type safety it can provide.
  
• Generics over primitive types are boxed, meaning they are inefficient.
  
• Java's native code interface is still inefficient and complex.
  
• Java still lacks value classes and operator overloading, making it a poor choice for applications involving numerics or graphics.
  

The most serious problem with the Java platform is and remains, however, that it is basically proprietary: all Java 2 platform implementations depend crucially on code licensed from Sun (e.g., there is no independent Swing implementation). Furthermore, there doesn't exist a Java standard that people can implement without having legal constraints imposed on them by Sun.

Re:Reality check

[egomaniac]

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.

Re:Nice First Step, But....

[truthsearch]

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.