|
Java has come along a long way. Many would agree
with this. I did not until the Java 1.5 “Tiger”
hit me. The tiger had several new features, and
more importantly, it has new syntax. Six major
upgrades that the tiger presents are certainly the generics,
enhanced for loop, autoboxing (unboxing), improvement
on Typesafe enum, Static import and the metadata. Of
course there are many more, which can be found at java’s
official site. Out of these six, at least four
would be used in my daily “programming” life.
From java 1.1 to 1.4, it seemed more like new frills
were simply added. It felt like earning more brownie
points when you downloaded the newer version.
But should I start using 1.5 immediately, maybe not.
The developers and programmers (if you distinguish
between them) are left with one great dilemma (me too).
It certainly is as to which version to use when preparing
software in java. This problem hides itself under
the carpet when you are programming for a specific client
with a specific system where you can get it upgrade
on site, but when the app is going to be used by Mr.
Williams from South Africa and Ms. Lee from Japan, you
really have to give a thought as to whether your app
is going to run on both the systems (that is why java
was made in the first place, isn’t it?).
I’ve always had the latest version of the sdk,
yet I would try and target compiling in a lower possible
version, so that even those people would be able to
use the apps, who were, well, frozen in time and didn’t
go up the “version ladder”. For e.g.,
ordinary applets, by me and my company, in most of the
cases would be compiled in java 1.1, so that no user
ends up waiting for an hour before the plugin for the
latest version is downloaded and installed (get yourself
a coffee if your yawning). For e.g., once on a
tour, I happened to visit some site in a cyber café,
which said that I needed to install java plugin 1.4
to view the page correctly (apparently, cyber cafes
don’t bother much about upgrading java), and when
I did, it turned out to be a stupid advertisement (Ahhh!
What agony!). Of course, over a period of time,
you expect the users to have gone to a level of higher
java plugin courtesy other company’s applets, but
just to be sure…
Well, so this “dilemma” is real and has to
be looked after (you don’t stand a chance if you
don’t). Many a times in java forums, you’ll
find beginners with the problem of “applet not
initializing” and when the compiling is targeted
for 1.1, it runs. Preferably, developers should
have the latest version (despite the huge bandwidth
it’s going to cost you to download it) and they
should try and keep their apps designed, if possible,
for lower versions for a universal application.
Although, this might not necessarily be imposed for
a long time, but certainly try and keep your apps designed
by the java 1.4 specifications for a few weeks, till
most of the users catch on with the tiger. This
should also give you sufficient time to upgrade your
programming ability version also. A recent survey
about java’s versions had about 260 respondents
out of which about 15% didn’t know that java had
versions, 8% preferred java as the good old java (can’t
believe it, me neither), 29% were happy, 32% wanted
newer versions but wanted the syntax of older versions
to remain and only the bugs being killed and the rest
were too confused to have an opinion.
On this note, its now entirely up to you to decide
which is your cup of java. I’ve just got
a book to learn to tame the tiger and I’ll be using
java 1.4 till I tame 1.5 good. So, I think it’ll
be around October, when I start using 1.5 hoping (with
crossed fingers) that most of the users by then would
be roaring with it.
I hope that this small article would help you make
a decision about which version of java to use.
|
