JavaOne 2005: Participate in the Future of Java (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

O'ReillyNet covers JavaOne 2005. "Participation is Sun's theme for JavaOne 2005, as repeatedly preached by speakers in the general sessions of the two days that opened this week's developer conference. The idea was captured early by emcee John Gage, Sun's chief researcher and science office director, who began the first day by asking developers to stand up, then by asking all CTOs, VCs and other deal-makers to stand up. "OK, programmers," he said, "there's who you have to meet.""

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Is Java unstable?

Posted Jul 1, 2005 3:39 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

I offer this as a question, not as a chain-yanking statement. From what I can lift from the article, J2SE 7 will feature XML integration directly in the language. J2SE 5 features generics. Multiple APIs have come and gone. Versionitis and WODA (write once debug anywhere) continue to afflict the platform. Is this considered stable?

Contrast this with the degree of syntax/API change (for better or for worse) in many other languages/toolkits (your choice). Java changes much more rapidly than any other free tool and it almost appears as they are trying to create a false upgrade cycle, for tools, books, licenses, etc.

Contrast once again with perl5 specifically, my investment in reading Learning Perl and Programming Perl has been paying off handsomely with almost no follow-on investment (i.e. no need to "relearn the language").

I am not singling Java out of course, PHP4->PHP5 and Perl5->Perl6 also have this characteristic, although in their favor the communities are basically presenting these as entirely new languages.

Is Java unstable?

Posted Jul 1, 2005 21:29 UTC (Fri) by oik (guest, #30786) [Link]

> J2SE 7 will feature XML integration directly in the language.
> J2SE 5 features generics.

And this breaks old code how exactly?

> Multiple APIs have come

Yes.

> and gone

I wouldn't go that far. A few things are deprecated, but they still work.

> Versionitis and WODA (write once debug anywhere) continue to afflict the platform

For J2SE, there are very few cross-platform issues. (although for J2ME, it is more like write once debug *everywhere*. Or at least, once for nokia, once for sony, once for samsung, once for motorola, and so on)

> Contrast this with the degree of syntax/API change (for
> better or for worse) in many other languages/toolkits (your choice)

Take your pick; stability, or new features. When Java changes, they are adding cool new stuff. OK, so C hasn't changed in years. If it had, it would have things like concurrency APIs and XML integration. But then it would be unstable aswell.

I suppose C# would be the obvious comparison to make. Doesn't the whole .NET framework have just as many updates as Java?

I also have that Perl book. I can't stand the language :-)

Oik