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Java 5 RC Available, Gold Targeted for this Month

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the test-driving dept.

Trevor Leach writes "Sun's Java 5 download page is now serving up J2SE 5.0 RC. There are loads of productivity enhancements in this release, code named 'Tiger,' including generics, enums, autoboxing of primitive types, and metadata. Additionally, the Java Developer's Journal qoutes Sun's Graham Hamilton, chief technologist of Java Software, as specifying September 30 as Tiger's target release date."

1 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Okay, nice, but... by Elamaton · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, if I'm going to learn Java properly, this might be as good a time as any. So far I've only scratched the surface with some trivial GUI apps a year and a half ago. Sure looks like I need to know it if I want to get a programming job around here (at least in Finland, it's Java, VB, C++ or C#, or another line of work - which sucks since I'm currently a PHP/Python man myself; and of the given alternatives, I'm only interested in Java).

    Getting a job would mean I'd have to learn J2EE as well (absolutely no one here is hiring plain J2SE people), and I honestly don't know how to go about it. Just looking at the TOC of Sun's J2EE tutorial is overwhelming with the enormous acronym soup, and judging by the articles I've read and by the quick glances I've taken at the types of literature available, learning it well seems to be nothing less than an impossible task.

    I remember seeing a graph depicting the ever-increasing requirements of a typical J2EE programmer compared to the actual skill levels of the current programmers. The gap is huge and ever widening, and I just know I'd be just one more lousy underperforming J2EE guy with my insufficient knowledge. Is it practically possible to learn the stuff in any other way besides doing it for a living, moving on up slowly from basic J2SE? Anyone here taken the leap, and how?

    I mean, you can't possibly know all that is J2EE properly. But what should one concentrate on, and roughly in what order? There's just TOO MUCH material, too many separate technologies, the practical purposes of which however overlap somewhat, and... I don't know, it's just too huge for my puny mind.

    And to go with the topic of the front page post even slightly: what does the new release of Java mean in the context of J2EE programming? What, if any, portions of the existing literature and other material does the new release make obsolete? And for J2SE literature, is there any fresh stuff that would be written with Java 5 in mind?

    Sigh... It's when things like this go through your mind that you wish you'd just be interested in something like plumbing as a career option, instead of programming. At least you'd always have work.