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Java 1.5.0 Now Officially Java 5.0
Quantum Jim writes "In a move which out-does Netscape's one-version number skip and Winamp's two-numbers skip, Sun has announced that the upcoming Java2 release will be marketed as version 5.0, skipping three-and-a-half numbers. Can version 6.022E23 be far behind? Thanks to David Flanagan for the heads-up."
Hmm... That must be some kind of record?
Although Microsoft did go from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000, that wasn't really a version jump (Windows 2000 = Windows NT 5) but a change of branding.
Anyone know even greater version inflations?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Seriously though -- I love Java, but Sun needs to pull its head out of its ass before C#, PHP, and Python relegate Java to the scrap heap.
With how everyone has been treating them, versioning is pretty much worthless, beyond identifying what you have..
None is consistent, there is no 'standard' and its ( as is apparent by the story, and many in the past ) all arbitrary...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Right now Sun markets Java as Java2, but all the developer's documentation refers to the internal version number 1.4 (soon to be 1.5). Hopefully they will grow a brain and drop this scheme and just stick to the one version from now on because it confuses everybody the first time they come accross it.
I'd settle for 3.0 if they had picked that. Java 1.2 would be 2.0 (inner classes, collections, other major additions).
it was confusing enough when java 1.2 was marketed as "java 2," and we subsequently saw java 2 1.3 and java 2 1.4. But java 2 5.0? That's just rediculous. :)
Anyone who says this is irrelevant, we should focus on the technology etc, has failed to understand that software is about more than technical details.
Managers don't understand the details - they don't bother to learn that 5.0 is really 1.5, and they make decisions based on their high level views.
Sun has hurt Java's name, and let its developers down, with this absurd naming move, a repeat of the shambolic schizophrenic 1.2/2.0 business years ago.
So now we have Java 2 Version 5????? Employers will want to know why developers haven't done any version 3 and version 4. And it will certainly confuse the crap out of them.
Java has a good name for professionalism, but whoever came up with this ought to hang their head in shame.
God, I hate marketing. Why do you have to have yet another number attached to a product? I could never figure what the hell Sun was talking about when they would go off on "Java 2", but then sprinkle in "1.4" or "1.5" when talking about the JDK. or JRE.
Jesus. Just give me a version number so I can track what it's compatible with, and what features it has. If you're bumping up your version number for a product, bump them for all related ones as well, in the same increment. Don't make me try to figure out what version number of the language is supported by which version number of the developer's kit for god's sake. Is it so damn hard?
I thought marketing was suppose to create clarity in the minds of the potential customer. Screwing around with numbering schemes isn't the way to do that. I don't care what your internal taxonomies are. Just label the thing, and stick with it.
I also take it that Sun's marketing/engineering is stealing their "internal" project naming protocols from Apple?
Sun kinda did that with Solaris. I was told Sun marketed Solaris 2.5 as Solaris 5 so that its version was higher than NT 4. Each 2.# release has just been called Solaris #. Though uname still reports the 2.# version.
Remember when they released Solaris 2.7 as Solaris 7 instead? Nothing new here.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
The operator should actually be 'or' in this case, if you're counting the numbers as features. IE something that would contain feature #3 would 11, and something that would contain feature #2 would be 10. 11 | 10 == 11
Why not calling it just Java 2004???
After all, we are all talking about vintages aren't we?
More seriously, Sun should just drop the Java 2/5 numbering and just use the year that is launched as the "brand"... and keep a "internal" version number for identification purposes...
That would keep the market droids happy and the programmers would have both an inteligent numbering and a discreet numbering to work with...
What world do YOU live in? It sounds like a pretty nice place. Where I live, marketing is intended to confuse and bewilder the customer so that they pay for things that they neither want nor need.
The question is what will java -version or System.getProperty("java.version") show. This could be a big deal for installers that expect a specific version format string. A similar case is in Windows 2000 the api version returns 5.0 and Windows XP returns 5.1
When Java SDK went from 1.1.x to 1.2.0 they decided that they had made lots of big changes (IIRC Swing and Collection.. possibly Inner classes *shrug*) so they called it Java 2.
Then why not Java 2.0? Why Java 2 1.2? I ask because I've been confused by this before, though got it worked out.
No no... Java 5 is still Java2 5.0. From the website: "Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... today introduced Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0"
If anyone has contact with the people who came up with the Java versioning scheme, please ask them what they are smoking and where I can get some.
MS Word for Windows has an interesting sequence of versions: 1, 2, 6, 95, 97, 2000. The numerological significance of this is left as an exercise for the reader.
well java2 was actually version 1.2, so why not java5 from version 1.5?
Once the greater majority of libraries have been rewritten to fully utilise genericity, it would be time to think about integrating generics into the VM.
Well, the 'language', the 'ideal' of java is at version 2, while the development kit is 1.4. However, apperantly Sun has decided to rename their development kit from 1.5 to 5. So now we have J2SDK 5. Which is just bizzare.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually, there was also a Word 6 for DOS (the final one, I believe), and also Word 6 for Mac. I think the motive was more to do with WordPerfect being at 5.1. Obviously 6 must be better than 5.1. Same as the leapfrogging version numberss that Netscape and IE did for a while.
The only difference I can see between Java and C++ is that there isn't a separate international entity that defines the standard. Sun, along with members of the Java Community Process, is in control of Java standards.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
> And don't even ask about Metafont...
Why not? It uses the same scheme, only the series converges to e, not pi.
Well, that makes part of the power of templates: They have all the good parts of macros, while avoiding most of their problems. The other part of their power comes from the fact that they are indeed more tham macros (and mode than Java/C# generics either): You can specialize them either completely or partially, allowing e.g. more efficient algorithms for special cases. Indeed, they are turing complete, which effectively means that you can make arbitrary complex decisions at compile time.
Of course this also gives the danger of overdoing it and producing incomprehensible code for little benefit, but then that danger is IMHO not really different from the same danger for pure runtime optimizations (if (special_case) { cryptic_code(); } else { slightly_less_cryptic_code(); }).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
int i = ((Number) container.get(indx));
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al