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Java SE 6 Released
twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java
Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support.
It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting
project's home page documents many other available scripting languages,
including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of
work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been
improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable
performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements
in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support
(For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without
specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem
is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without
restarting the server).
Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through
their Developer Services program."
The scripting support is specified at JSR 223.
Here are some additional new features:
BTW, why isn't this on the front page? All the fussing about the possible new license was there but not the product publishment itself.
OpenJDK project
Hotspot
Early 2007 we should see the class libs as well
See also here
"Q:
When will you finish open sourcing the JDK? What is the timeline?
A:
We expect to release a fully buildable JDK based almost completely on open-sourced code in the first half of 2007"
Some help on getting you back in the saddle with the new features:
1.5 features in a nutshell
What's the best way to get back into using Java? I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.
I actually enjoyed the Head First Java book from O'Reilly, though I'll probably get mocked for it here.... I admit, it can feel a bit "kiddie" to have a lot of pictures, do puzzles and so on, but involving the right half of your brain makes stuff stick better, and for me, makes it fun and fast to learn. Second edition has some Java5 stuff in it.
If that style of learning is not for you, or if you are too advanced for that level, the Java Tutorial was pretty recently updated with new trails for Java 5 and Java 6, so you should find an appropriate level for you quickly. Also Java 5 Developer's Notebook is a neat guide.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You know, every time a java story appears here this line gets trotted out, but I'm really not sure that it's anywhere near as valid as it once might have been. From what I understand Sun have made a lot of efforts in the last few releases (1.3+) to speed up swing. I've written quite a few java applications in the last couple of years, all swing based, and none of them has caused me to have any concerns over the speed of the GUI toolkit.
Sure swing still has some other issues issues (eg proper native look and feel), but I'm sure that a lot of the complaints people have about the toolkit's speed are either very old prejudices or stem from poor coding within the application rather than from swing itself.
I'm sure that it is. Java's backwards compatibility has always been pretty spectacular. They've got millions of lines of unit-test code that they test new releases against, in addition to major applications which get explicit testing. JBoss is about as major an application as you'll find.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
If you have an OpenGL capable gfx card you should enable the OpenGL rending pipe for your Swing applications with this
java -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true *javaprogram*
It is disabled by default for compatability reasons, but all java programs should really make two launchers so users can choose.
The OpenGL path should be a lot faster now, since it has been refactored to use only a single thread to ship commands to the gfx card, which is the same technique that most 3d games uses.
It should be noticable.