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."

Comments

Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware's comes to mind. Any others?

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of two:
Windows 3.1 to Windows 95: 91.9 version numbers skipped
Windows 98 to Windows 2000: 1902 version numbers skipped

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Anonymous Coward]

In that vein, Sim City 3000 to 4 dropped back 2996.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Shulai]

Pike programming language (underused but very nice indeed, I prefer Pike to Java) comes from version 0.6 to version 7.0

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Bloomy]

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.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[NitsujTPU]

Windows XP = Windows written using the buddy system, on daily builds, where code is thrown away at the end of the day if it isn't complete. The entire design is sitting on flash cards taped to a filing cabinet somewhere in a break room at Microsoft.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[jrc313]

What about MS Word. It went from version 2 to 6.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Kourino]

Emacs.

Some time ago, the developers realized that GNU Emacs would probably never change its major version number (which is 1). So, after some point, instead of "GNU Emacs 1.x.y", they started dropping the 1 (since it was constant information and therefore redundant). So the current release of GNU Emacs is actually 1.21.3, but it's called "GNU Emacs 21.3".

This actually appears to be what Sun is doing now. They've done it before with Solaris/SunOS ... twice, in fact.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[dosius]

Sun's done it before too: Solaris "7" is actually 2.7

Moll.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[x0n]

The first release of Windows NT, as architected by Dave Cutler of VAX/VMS fame, started at 3.1. The fact that 16bit Windows was at 3.1 at that point is irrelevent. NT was a complete rewrite, hence NT = New Technology. Therefore, it should really have been released as 1.0.

- Oisin

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[tonyr60]

Actually the original poster is correct, Sun has done it before.

Solaris went..
2.0
2.1 ....
2.6
7

I realise the underlying SunOS continues the consistent numbering. But Solaris did officially skip several numbers.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[aacool]

A picture editing program I use (and like) called Picasa went to version 1.618 from version 1 - no prizes for guessing why

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[the_soulman]

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.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[kubrick]

"Word for Windows" went from v2 to v6, but that was because the previous version of "Word for DOS" was v5.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[MobyTurbo]

For those who don't know what Slackware version skip he's refering to, it was 4.0 to 7.0. Pat Volkerding himself admitted he was doing the version inflation because he kept on hearing from potential users that RH was "Linux 7" while Slackware was "only version 4" so he renumbered it to match more or less the numbers that most everyone else is using. (Well, Debian is still 3.0 :-) )

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[dnahelix]

The ratio of 1:1.618 is known as the Golden Ratio

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Alexis de Torquemada]

Did Warhammer 40,000 have a predecessor? If not, that's a daring version number for a first release.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Myen]

Possibly also because Netscape 5 is still sitting around on mozilla.org - the code that actually was open sourced and discarded.

Appearently some people inside Netscape actually wanted to release 5 based on the old code, and concurrently work on 6 based on the new code (NGLayout/Gecko). See interview on ars technica with Scott Collins.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[jrockway]

Well the first version of TeX was 3.

Then there was 3.1
then 3.14
then 3.141 ...
now it's 3.14159

And don't even ask about Metafont...

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[1u3hr]

Whe Word for Windows and Word for DOS version numbers were out of sequence and they unified them by eliminating the DOS version and moving the Windows version to 6.

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.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[1u3hr]

Dont forget there was a word for Unix... I still have the SCO (forgive me for mentioning them) version somewhere around here ;-)

Well, I didn't know that. But SCO Unix was originally MS Xenix. Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems Release 5.1:

Microsoft(r) Word for UNIX Systems Release 5.1 from SCO is the most powerful multiuser word processor available today. It brings the best MSDOS word processing features to multiuser UNIX Systems. Ideal for offices of any size, Microsoft Word 5.1 allows you to effortlessly combine text, graphics, and data to create virtually any type of document-with excellent formatting and printer support. Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems is designed for today's demanding professionals who want the best word processing features.

Apparently discontinued in 1996. Obviously, it could be ported to Linux trivially, Bill's dead body being the only obstacle.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[Sandmann]

> And don't even ask about Metafont...

Why not? It uses the same scheme, only the series converges to e, not pi.

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[schweikert]

Sorry, but you get it yourself wrong...

Solaris is the "distribution" and is versioned 2.5, 2.6, 7, 8, 9.

SunOS is the kernel and is versioned 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9.

So, Solaris 9 contains SunOS 5.9 (not 2.9!)

Re:Other Famous Version Number Skips

[zerocool^]

Christ, as a degree holding classicist, I can't let you get away with two sentences with that many errors in them.

XP is a long used symbol for Christ, dating back to some of the earliest christian artwork, with the symbols pronounced Chi-Rho in Roman. We could say the year of XP is 1.

Let's take it one at a time:

XP is a long used symbol for Christ

XP is not a symbol for Christ. It is the first two letters of the word "Christ" in Greek.

dating back to some of the earliest christian artwork

Dating back actually to the battle of the Milvian bridge, where the would-be Roman emperor Constantine fought the would-be Roman emperor Maxentius. The actual story of why they were both fighting goes back to Diocletian's division of the empire to a system of 2 senior and 2 junor rulers (2 Augusti and 2 caesars). Constantine saw the sign "XP" in the sky on his way to the bridge with his army (accounts vary), and he interpreted it to mean that if he had his soldiers paint XP on their shields, christ would help him win. Some accounts include that he heard the words "In hoc signo vinces", or "In this sign, conquer".

with the symbols pronounced Chi-Rho in Roman

No, no, no, no! Chi and Rho are GREEK letters. Not to mention ROMAN is not a language. Latin is the language spoken by the Roman people. X and P (Chi and Rho) are the first two letters of XPISTOS, chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omicron-sigma, or the Greek translation of the hebrew word for messiah, "one annointed by god".

We could say the year of XP is 1

Or, we could say that the year of XP (i.e. the year that it became significantly important) is 312 A.D., the year of the battle at the milvian bridge.

~Will

Winamp didn't skip version 4

[MikeXpop]

Winamp 5 isn't exactly Winamp version 5. It's more like 3.5. They used the number 5 because they wanted the features of 3 with the speed and ability of 2. 2+3=5. And that's where they got the number.

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[GnuVince]

Winamp could go with 8 for the next version and go with fibonacci version numbers

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[Epistax]

If it has the features of 3 AND the ability of 2 any boolean logitician will tell you that the version number should be 6.

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[BlueGecko]

Last time I checked, 3 & 2 == 2 (11 & 10 == 10, if you prefer binary), so if "any boolean logitician [sic] will tell you that the version number should be 6," we are in serious trouble...

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[realdpk]

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

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[klparrot]

In binary representation of integers, yes, (3 & 2) == 2. But if we're just working with boolean true (>0) and false (0) values, AND behaves like multiplication and OR behaves like addition. Sure, it's not exactly the same thing, but 0*0=0, 0*1=0, 1*0=0, 1*1=1 and 0+0=0, 0+1=1, 1+0=1, 1+1=2 (2 can still be considered "true").

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[UserGoogol]

Because everybody hated Winamp 3, and so it was more-or-less abandoned and they continued working on Winamp 2 for a while, eventually getting up to something like 2.9. If they had named it Winamp 3.1, people would have said, "That's Winamp 3!! WINAMP 3 IS TEH SUCK!!" and not downloaded it. So they decided to do a whole different number. Nullsoft being the llama-whipping company that they are, they decided to do 2+3 instead of 4.

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[VertigoAce]

Winamp v8: twice the features of 3 with the speed and ability of 2. Or none of the features of 3 with four times the speed and ability of 2. Or the speed and ability of 2 cubed.

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[dnoyeb]

well java2 was actually version 1.2, so why not java5 from version 1.5?

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[Hatta]

If you like that, it's worth noting that the version numbers of Knuth's masterpieces TeX and METAFONT are converging to pi and e, respectively.

Re:Winamp didn't skip version 4

[trout_fish]

Although this is J2SE v5, or Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 to give it a longer name.

So we've had JDK1.1, J2SDK1.2, J2SDK1.3, J2SDK1.4 and now we get J2SDK5.0.

Strongly Typed Container Classes

[NitsujTPU]

From briefly viewing some literature about Java 1.5.0 (er, 5.0... W0w!) the feature that excites me most about this is the ability to strongly type container classes, such as one can do in Ada or C++.

Joy.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[MarkWPiper]

While this is a nice feature, it is strictly (at least for now), syntactic. The difference is that the expense of casting is still occurring under the hood; you just no longer have to bother typing it out. I believe people are referring to it as 'autoboxing'. Therefore, these strongly typed container classes are not as powerful as C++'s templates.

I read a pretty good interview w/ Eckel and that guy who has done most of the work on C#. The creator of C# was bashing Java's generics, because they aren't giving the full performance possible. And I agree. There is still such a thing as performance critical code, and Java can make it frustratingly hard to write it. Providing featureful, fast data structures would be a good place to start.

I can't find the article I'm referencing, but this sums up Eckel's view.

Pizza was an alternative implementation of generics for Java. I wish that Sun had chosen this project as their basis for 1.5's generics, rather than GJ (Generic Java). I believe its implementation is much closer to that of C++'s templates. I'd love to use pizza, but it's just not wide-spread enough to justify it in enterprise code.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[Logreybaby]

I think this is the interview you are referring to. It is an interesting read for Java and C# developers.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[theefer]

If you liked Pizza, maybe you'll like Scala, a functional, multiparadigm language developped by the same author, Martin Odersky. I have him as a programming teacher, and we learnt functional programming with Scala. It was a great course, and the language is really elegant and powerful.

It has bindings with Java and .Net, but remains functional-oriented.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[therealmoose]

Auto(un)boxing is the (de)encapsulated of raw types (int, char) into their wrapper classes (Integer, Character) and back as required. Instead of:

int i = ((Integer) container.get(indx));

auto(un)boxing allows you to just type:

int i = container.get(indx);

It is quite unrelated to generics.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[newhoggy]

Sun's move is actually a very smart move because Java's value is not in the language or the VM, but the libraries. Not just the libraries that come with the JDK, but the huge number of libraries "out there". This move allows them to make all libraries 100% backward compatible.

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.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[ramzak2k]

just being anal,

int i = ((Integer) container.get(indx));

would not work

should have been :
int i = ((Integer) container.get(indx)).intValue();

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[Anonymous Coward]

Without generics, boxing and unboxing is required for collections, because the collection needs a boxed object.

A good implementation of generics eliminates the boxing and unboxing overhead, because the collection can work directly with the underlying raw types.

I don't know about Java, but in C#, a generic collection of ints is about 10 times faster than the non-generic version, all because boxing/unboxing is eliminated.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[maxwell demon]

Still, you shouldn't go around talking about Java Generics being strictly syntactic relative to C++ templates. Did you notice how C++ templates like to be headers? The compiler basically just substitutes in the full text of the template every time you instantiate it.

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(); }).

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[julesh]

While this is a nice feature, it is strictly (at least for now), syntactic. The difference is that the expense of casting is still occurring under the hood; you just no longer have to bother typing it out.

Are you sure? I understood that it worked by generating implicit subclasses of your generic type that are customized in terms of return type. So if you had say an object of type Iterator, the run-time environment would procede as if the object's next() function was declared as "String next ()" ?

Although I'll admit its a good 6 months since I read it, and am hazy on some of the details.

Re:Strongly Typed Container Classes

[Jonboy X]

Well, as long as we're being anal, you really don't need to cast all the way down to Integer:

int i = ((Number) container.get(indx));

...would have done just fine. As Bugs would say, "Ain't I a stinker?"

95 - 2000

[alitaa]

that number skip was quite huge too :p

Re:95 - 2000

[basics]

actually, since 2000 == nt++, its 4 - 2000.

Not really that odd - Emacs did it already

[Chainsaw]

Isn't GNU Emacs really at version number 1.21.x.y but they just skip the leading "1." when writing it? Then this would be the same, except that it's just a programming language and not an operating system in desperate need of a good editor.

Re:Not really that odd - Emacs did it already

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop saying that about Emacs, when there exists a perfectly good vi implementation for it.

not even the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun already jumped 1.2 and called it "2".

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This will go great with my new copy of Linux 10.0.

Good to know...

[Mark_MF-WN]

Good to know that Sun is hard at work, coming up with strange new ways to confuse the end-user.

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.

Re:Good to know...

[dekeji]

These languages are being used for different purposes. For example, at the moment, C# seems mainly used as a Visual Basic replacement for client-side development under windows.

Same purposes:

GUI development: C#/.NET (Windows), C#/Gtk# (Linux), Python/Gtk (Linux), Python/wxWindows (cross-platform)

Server Side: ASP.NET (Windows, Linux), PHP, Python, Perl

Cross Platform: C++/wxWindows, C++/Qt, Python/wxWindows

ASP.NET is the biggest threat to Java: that's where server-side development is moving on Windows (Windows developers don't care about "proprietary"); Mono's .NET implementation then gives those people the option to deploy on Linux when they come to their senses.

Why should they? Python hasn't relegated Perl or C to the scrap heap, neither has PHP.

Perl has relegated awk to the scrap heap. And Python has pretty much killed Perl's aspiration in several areas (GUI development, Matlab replacement, etc.). PHP is probably far more common than Perl for server-side development now. And all of them have taken away a lot of "market share" from C.

Languages don't usually die, but they can become less and less relevant. And that can even happen pretty quickly.

Versioning is a joke

[nurb432]

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...

Where does the 2 come into this?

[nagora]

As someone who is sitting here with "Learning Java" on the desk, I was already wondering why Java2 was called 1.4.x.

TWW

Re:Where does the 2 come into this?

[barcodez]

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. However when they went from 1.2 to 1.3 they hadn't made too many major changes so they didn't bother and the same for 1.4. There are lot's of changes in 1.5 so I guess they thought they should give it a new number. However Java 2 version 5 is stupid as is J2SE 5 and J2EE 5 - all very confusing for everyone.

Re:Where does the 2 come into this?

[EvanED]

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.

Re:Where does the 2 come into this?

[EvanED]

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.

Re:Where does the 2 come into this?

[still_nfi]

I believe it has to do with the underlying VM. There were changes in the VM going from 1.1 to 1.2. Hence the name change to Java2

1.3, 1.4 & 1.5 have not made any changes to the VM, therefore, they are still being called Java2.

When sun find a compelling reason to make changes to the VM, you can expect to see a Java3 1.0. That's pretty unlikely to happen for quite some time though.

they must have Jedi on the payroll

[eidechse]

"This is the version you're looking for."
[waves hand Alec Guinness style]

Re:they must have Jedi on the payroll

[zoloto]

Alec Guinness was always my favorite.

AG: "This isn't the code you're looking for"
SCO: "THis isn't the code we're looking for"
AG: "You're a bunch of whiny assholes"
SCO: "We're a bunch of whiny assholes"
AG: "Slashdot was right all along"
SCO: "Slashdot was right all along"
AG: "Move along"
SCO: "Move along, Move along"

Linus Torvalds: "I thought for sure they were going litigate us"
AG: "The force is your ally to a weak mind"

Not that I'm implying any SCO code is in linux, but if you couldn't see that try reading it again. Mods, please be gentle!

Systems already in place.

[ameoba]

They should've just adopted an existing versioning system such as the one GNU Emacs uses and called it Java 15.0 to avoid creating any unnecessary confusion.

For non-physics people:

[Tar-Palantir]

6.022E23 is Avogadro's number, the number of atoms in a mole of an element.

Re: For non-physics people:

[Noren]

That's only true for an ideal gas at STP (Standard temperature and pressure). Admittedly, this is where a lot of courses emphasize moles to learn the Ideal Gas Rule. In the real world things aren't quite so simple (and no real gas is truly ideal, that's just a first-order approximation.)

The formal definition of a mole is that it's the number of atoms in 12 grams of the isotope Carbon-12. The molecular weight of atoms as listed on a periodic table represent the average mass of a mole of the element in naturally occurring proportions. In the case of Carbon, small amounts of the 13C and 14C isotopes result in an average mass slightly above 12.

Re:For non-physics people:

[fcw]

Now also known as Javagadro's number, the number of functions in the standard class libraries.

Realistically, I'd call it 3.0

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

I'd settle for 3.0 if they had picked that. Java 1.2 would be 2.0 (inner classes, collections, other major additions).

this is why "java 2" was such a dumb idea

[jbellis]

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. :)

Re:this is why "java 2" was such a dumb idea

[Feztaa]

just wait until 1.6 comes out, and then we'll see java2 5.0 1.6 ;)

seriously though, it seems like sun should just pull an emacs, drop the "1.", and use the minor version number as THE version number from now on. Then the ordering would become sane; we'd have java5 now, java6 next, java7 later on, etc.

Embarrassing and Harmful

[fastdecade]

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.

Re:Embarrassing and Harmful

[Alexis de Torquemada]

Java has a good name for professionalism, but whoever came up with this ought to hang their head in shame.

You misspelled "ought to be hung".

*sigh* I hate marketing

[Croaker]

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?

Re:*sigh* I hate marketing

[jdkane]

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"

Amen brother. Tell it like it is. How does Sun expect to compete with .Net if they can't even stop confusing everybody over the version numbers. They're just version numbers for crying out loud. Bring them in line ... just make them both higher than they were before, but the same number.

Re:*sigh* I hate marketing

[dasmegabyte]

You're joking, right?

You're asking how sun can compete with Microsoft's .NET initiative in terms of confusing people?

Tell me, what version of the .NET framework are you running? What version of studio .net and what version of the project files? Do you know the differences between the syntax of line end points between library version 1.0.3333 and 1.0.5000 (the library version used with Framework 1.1)? Have you checked your global assembly cache lately?

Shit man. Most people still don't even know what .NET is. I've been writing in it for two years and my boss still thinks it has something to do with the internet maybe. The versioning system is very complex and promises to be reminiscent of DLL hell. Each version of the Framework has wierd, subtle bugs that pop up at the strangest times...there's one with visual inheritance and the passing of alt-key mnemonic events in VB variables declared WithEvents that will probably keep us off of Framework 1.1 forever. Luckily for my support department, .NET (unlike Java) is designed to maintain compatibility with previous versions, not by keeping deprecated methods, but by keeping the old CLI and Framework on the machine when a new one's installed (at about 140 meg a pop).

Incidentally, Java 2 is the platform. Java 2 competes with .NET. The other number, 1.x, is the version number of the runtime or the compiler/sdk for the Java language. Java 1.5 competes with C#. How hard is that?

Re:*sigh* I hate marketing

[Dogtanian]

I thought marketing was suppose to create clarity in the minds of the potential customer.

Aaawww... they're so cute when they're all innocent and naive like that. (^_^)

Marketing is the reason I can buy two different brands of low-cal Pepsi (Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max(*)); any differences are relatively minor, but Pepsi Max allows men to buy the stuff without being seen drinking a "girl on a diet" drink.

Marketing is meant to sell stuff. Whether Sun will actually do this with their fscked-up numbering is beyond me. Personally, the whole "Java 2" business confused me to hell; this is worse.

(*) Known as Pepsi One in the US, I believe.

Par for the course with Sun

[notsoclever]

Remember when they released Solaris 2.7 as Solaris 7 instead? Nothing new here.

Re:Whoa

[jrumney]

Anyone know even greater version inflations?

Emacs 1.12 to 13.0. Like Java, its not a real version skip, just the initial "1." got dropped because it seemed superfluous if it was never getting updated.

versions of tomorrow

[MrLint]

Well there has been some speculation for the past several years what will happen when apple set to MacOS 10.9 (X.9)?

Will it be 11? XI?

Re:versions of tomorrow

[nailchipper]

megaman did this.. they got to 1,2,3...X and then just started fresh and went X1, X2 etc.

Oracle

[snowtigger]

I believe Oracle started by releasing version 2.0

"to make it sound like it had improvements from the first version"

As a Java developer, I'm all for it

[damm0]

Hey, if it works as a marketing ploy and increases the number of people who want my skills, I'm all for it.

Now it's obvious...

[omicronish]

that Java is better than C#/.NET: 5.0 > 2.0. I was so confused as to which I should choose. Thanks Sun for helping!

Re:Bread cocks

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 = Solaris 7 actually. Both a rebranding and a version jump. Remember that SunOS 5.6 = Solaris 2.6.

Java numbering...

[Kindaian]

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?

[Mark_MF-WN]

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.

java -version

[mpn14tech]

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

Re:java -version

[harmonica]

The second beta still has the 1.5 naming scheme:

java version "1.5.0-beta2"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0-beta2-b51)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0-beta2-b51, mixed mode, sharing)

Linus makes announcement

[Pharmboy]

In other news:

Linus Torvald announced today that the next version of the Linux kernel will be released a "Linux Kernel Version 11". Said Torvald, "Thats one more than Mac's OS, and several more than Microsoft, so people will know its better."

Not as fast as gentoo linux

[ringer9cs]

What happened from Gentoo Linux 1.4 to Gentoo Linux 2004.0!!!

Don't you see the pattern?

[tweakt]

Seems there's alaways been an unnofficial major version but only certain times do they use it officially for marketing...

1.0
1.1
1.2 --> Java2
1.3 ... "Java3" ?
1.4 ... "Java4" ?
1.5 --> Java5

Re:Don't you see the pattern?

[trout_fish]

Read the article...

This isn't Java5, it is Java 2 v5

Pedant time...

[zoney_ie]

Windows 95 = Windows 4.00.950 on MSDOS 7
Windows 98 = Windows 4.10.1998 on MSDOS 7
Windows 2000 = Windows NT 5.00.2195
For completeness...
Windows XP = Windows NT 5.1.2600

Come on, out-pedant me...

Re:Pedant time...

[ameoba]

Comparing version numbers of Windows and Windows NT is senseless. It's not like Windows became NT; they were completely separate codebases had parallel development for a number of years. ...and you left out ME.

Re:Pedant time...

[Laser Lou]

They raised it to MS-DOS 8, even though it had fewer commands. If they really want to kill DOS, they should announce a product called "MS-DOS Forever."

Re:Pedant time...

[ralian]

From http://bug.lockhead.org/build%20numbers.html:

• Windows Longhorn: ( Most recent known build) PDC build 4051 (Leaked Builds: 3683 4008 4015 4029 4051, 4053)
• Windows Server 2K3: 5.2.3790
• XP SP2: 2082 beta 2
• Windows XP: 5.1.2600 (SP1a)
• Windows 2000: 5.00.2195 (SP4)
• Windows NT 4: 4.00.1381 SP6a
• Windows ME: 4.9.3000
• Windows 98 SE: 4.10.2222
• Windows 98: 4.10.1998
• Windows 95: 4.00.950A

BMW & Canon

[Max Threshold]

Similar to BMW's Z8... it's sort of like a Z3 with a M5 engine. Or at least that's the implication.

OTOH, there is absolutely no logic behind the U.S. market designations of Canon's mid-range SLR bodies. They went from the Elan, to the Elan II, to the Elan 7, to the Elan 7N.

Version *strip* not skip.

[Turadg]

Exactly. This isn't a version number "skip"; it's a version number "strip".

The second digit becomes the first and the third the second. This is perfectly in line with accepted norms when you consider the improvements of 1.4.2 over 1.4.1. For minor increments, Sun had to resort to seriously odd numbers like 1.4.2_04.

Makes sense to me. The "2" in J2SE is unfortunate, but at this point the numericity of that character is dead. J2SE, J2EE and J2ME are just brands, not versions.

Re:Solaris

[mabinogi]

it's not quite that bad, but at the same time, it's worse...

Solaris 2.6 was SunOS 5.6, and Solaris 7 is SunOS 5.7

So you have -

SunOS 5.6, Solaris 2.6
SunOS 5.7, Solaris 7

Re:at least there not doing what borland did!

[Genrou]

Perhaps had they just kept right on calling it Pascal,

They had. Delphi and Kylix do not name the language, they name the environment. The language in which you can program using Delphi and Kylix is Object Pascal, which is not exactly Pascal, but Pascal enhanced to work with objects.

Leisure Suit Larry ^_^

[kaigeX]

There is officially a Leisure Suit Larry 4, subtitled "The Missing Floppies". http://pc.ign.com/objects/621/621156.html

Borg Numbering

[Boyceterous]

They should have called it
Seven of Nine
and introduced a couple of bulging container classes.

Java vs. JDK

[autopr0n]

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.

Common for Sun.

[jellomizer]

Take a look at solaris versions. Well there were 2 sets of versions Solaris and Sun OS

There was Solaris 2.5 and 2.6 then they made solaris 7 aka 2.7 then solaris 8 and solaris 9 and if you check the version numbers you get Solaris 2.9 and SunOS 5.9

This seems to be common for sun when their product seems to reach maturity and they are not planning on doing a major overhall to their product they will drop the first diget then make the 10s spot the version number. I Think it is more for an advertisement thing because a lot of people dont like getting incremental updates .1 .2 .3 they like getting v2 v3 that way it sounds like they are getting a major version change. But with Java Code being stablized people are still on 1.2 and 1.3 where they really should be at 1.5 for best functionally.

Re:deeper problem

[bunratty]

Huh? I can name three Java compilers: javac, jikes, and gjc. There are also several companies that make JVMs: Sun, Microsoft, IBM, and others. The Java standards are defined in the books The Java Programming Language and The Java Virtual Machine Specification.

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.

Aerospace Industry

[greyhoundofdeath]

Let take a look at some airliner sequences. Just when you think they're being consistent, they zing you.

Airbus:
A300
A310 up 10
A320 up 10
A330 up 10
A340 up 10
A319 down 21
A321 up 2
A380 up 59

Boeing
707
727 up 20
737 up 10
747 up 10
757 up 10
767 up 10
777 up 10
717 down 60
7E7 D0?
I guess they've been using HEX all along. Who the $#%^ versions in HEX?