| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Not "Java 2 Platform"?Not "Java 2 Platform"?Posted Dec 12, 2006 0:39 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104)Parent article: Sun Announces Java Platform Standard Edition 6 It looks like Sun dropped "2" from the language version. The previous version of Java Platform was "Java(TM) 2 Platform, Standard Edition". It looks like Sun doesn't try to pretend any longer that it can singlehandedly assign version numbers to the Java programming language (as opposed to it's implementations). If that's true, I appreciate Sun's humility.
(Log in to post comments)
Not "Java 2 Platform"? Posted Dec 12, 2006 1:53 UTC (Tue) by nlucas (subscriber, #33793) [Link] It's more easy to believe they finally understood how bad that decision was. Most non-techie people can maybe understand a version number, but not two version numbers on the same product name (hell, it took me a long time before I understood what that 2 was).
In a related note, Microsoft also backed from using .NET on every new product name (even when no .net framework was involved) because the confusion among marketing people and users was worse than the advantages.
Not "Java 2 Platform"? Posted Dec 12, 2006 21:38 UTC (Tue) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link] Core 2 Duo anyone? What's wrong with these people?
Not "Java 2 Platform"? Posted Dec 12, 2006 23:08 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] The funniest thing is that "Core 2 Duo" has two cores. It's akin calling Boeing 747 "Engine 4 Quadro" :)
Not "Java 2 Platform"? Posted Dec 13, 2006 23:27 UTC (Wed) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link] There was actually a real reason why Sun had the whole 'Java 2 Standard Edition, Version 1.4' nonsense for so long.
Back in the 90's, the contract that Sun entered into with Microsoft surfaced on the net. It had terms that required Microsoft to pick up any features that were added into Java during the 1.x sequence.
When it came time for Java 1.2, Sun realised that they had already advanced the platform enough to deserve a major number release (and if you look at the difference between JDK 1.1 and JDK 1.2, you can't deny that), but their leverage to force Microsoft to pick up the new features vanished if they called it Java 2.0.
The whole 'Java 2 Standard Edition, version such and so' was a dodge to keep Microsoft on the hook to accept their new features.
When that contract ended (in most unfriendly fashion), the need was no longer there, and they went with Java 5, 6, etc., for the marketing.
Not "Java 2 Platform"? Posted Dec 12, 2006 5:25 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Sun does singlehandedly assign version numbers to the Java programming language. They publish the language specification. I think the reason the "2" is gone is that they released JLS 3, but they released JDK 5 with the wrong platform version (JDK 4 got described in an amendment to JLS 2, but JDK 5 wasn't going to work that way), so the platform version was clearly meaningless. They've just been discarding meaningless digits from their names, and any number that didn't change between JDKs 4 and 5 was clearly meaningless. I still think it was supposed to be called JavaZ JDKl (to sound more trendy in the late 90s, of course), and the marketting folks couldn't read the font.
|
|
||||||||||||