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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."
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.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Sun already jumped 1.2 and called it "2".
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
In that vein, Sim City 3000 to 4 dropped back 2996.
"This is the version you're looking for."
[waves hand Alec Guinness style]
6.022E23 is Avogadro's number, the number of atoms in a mole of an element.
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.
Pike programming language (underused but very nice indeed, I prefer Pike to Java) comes from version 0.6 to version 7.0
Got Pike?
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?
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
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.
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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.
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.
Emacs.
... twice, in fact.
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
I wish people would stop saying that about Emacs, when there exists a perfectly good vi implementation for it.
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!
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.
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."
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
What happened from Gentoo Linux 1.4 to Gentoo Linux 2004.0!!!
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.
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...
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
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.
The ratio of 1:1.618 is known as the Golden Ratio
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
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.
They should have called it
Seven of Nine
and introduced a couple of bulging container classes.
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...
My other car is first.