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Re: J2SE 1.5 Beta 1 for MacOS X ?

Welcome to the bleeding edge. If you _must_ use the latest JVM beta the second it's available ( er, what's the feature you're using that's not in 1.4.2? ), then you have to use a platform Sun releases, period. It doesn't _require_ giving up your Macintosh in all cases; use it as a desktop and compile your code on a remote Sun ( or Linux ) machine... I guess you can use X11 for UI stuff, maybe? Or admit you're bleeding-edge and do what lots of people in that situation do: have two machines in your workspace, one for research and one for document production/email/business use.

Maybe because you're an author, and have to research the new stuff is before it's in common use, you have this requirement to use pre-release software the minute it's available. Fine. But it's completely unrealistic to expect Apple to churn these things out as soon as Sun does, and there's little incentive for them to do so, as you have to realize that you're in a serious minority.

Back in the real world, *most* people would rather see something stable and tested before running production code on it. I'd much rather Apple spend resources getting the bugs out of current JVMs rather than being lock-step with Sun, which they probably can't do for non-engineering reasons anyway. The vast majority of programmers probably feel the same way- if you're speculating about James Gosling, I'm speculating he would agree ( besides I'm sure he has one of the supported machines or unreleased code lying around anyway ). Gripe about Sun not supporting Apple if you want...

As for Scott's problem of folks writing code using beta JVMs and wanting to deploy that stuff early, that's a slightly different problem... but it still stems from an arguably over-eager early-adopter syndrome. Apple seems to have heard us on that one, as he noted, but given that Apple may not know what Sun is releasing as a beta until a few weeks beforehand, at best, this may be a case where realities of the production of technology should perhaps influence your business decisions- either counsel folks using OS X to lag their migration plans by a few months, or have the hardware you need on hand. It may be the case that if you need to be developing JDK 1.5 apps _right_now_, you may have to have Sun-supported hardware. Not that I really understand generics as any kind of compelling argument, but you set your priorities. For server-side stuff, it might make sense to develop on the server, which doesn't need to be Apple, though it would be nice...

In most cases, since the VMs are always backwards-compatible, it really makes more sense to code to something which is _not_ a cutting edge VM. As a programmer who has been using Java for years, I actually remain unconvinced that some of the 1.5 stuff is worth the trouble it may cause, even though it's nice to see Sun giving people what they ask for. Beyond that type of reservation, there's quite a bit of wisdom to requiring things you depend on to be well-tested.

Apple doesn't pre-announce stuff, but we can judge somewhat by developer previews... it'll be interesting to see how quickly we get a JDK 1.5 preview. I for one am not anxiously awaiting it at all, although since 1.4.2 seems to fix that nagging 'ghost dialog' issue, I'm happy for Apple to work on it.

On Feb 5, 2004, at 12:17 PM, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

At 9:32 AM -0800 2/5/04, email@hidden wrote:

What *is* it with Java people? Java 1.4.2 is *just* out, and already people are complaining because 1.5 isn't in their hands. This happens for every single release. Java seems to be the only environment where people are positively *eager* to limit the customer base by building software that can't possibly run on anything but the latest, cutting-edge version. (Yet Apple gets condemned for not supporting 1.4 back to OS 9. Go figure.)

There are some of us (including me) whose business depends on being able to lead the market by working with the latest, most bleeding edge technology. As long as the Mac is a second class citizen in the Java world, then we won't be able to use Macs to the extent we might like. If that's not how your business works, fine; but it very much affects what I do.


--

Elliotte Rusty Harold
email@hidden
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/ cafeaulaitA
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 >Re: J2SE 1.5 Beta 1 for MacOS X ? (From: email@hidden)
 >Re: J2SE 1.5 Beta 1 for MacOS X ? (From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <email@hidden>)



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