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What is it with the friggin cat names? (J2SE 1.5 snapshots available)

Mon, 06/14/2004 - 11:45 — kebernet

Sun is making pre-RC snapshots of the 1.5 JDK available to play with. Of course code-name "Tiger" just invites comparisons with Apple.

Also, look here if you want a good overview of all the cool new language constructs in 1.5.0.

Honestly, some of the stuff is good, some of it I really don't like. The "import static" syntax is a big one. Frankly, I think that reduces code clarity in a MAJOR way. It really seems like a lot of this is just pulling in the stuff from C++ that, while handy, makes for less "readable" (in the sense that it reads like English) code.

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Tue, 06/15/2004 - 12:41 — invalidname (not verified)

RE: What is it with the friggin cat names? (J2SE 1.5 snapshots

Some of the 1.5 features, like foreach and the printf workalike, seem like too-obvious kowtowing to those who criticize Java and don't know what they're talking about (e.g., "my favorite language has a foreach and Java doesn't, so Java must suck"). What, if Obj-C takes off, will we add square-brace method calls, just to mollify that crowd?

Also, I don't think the people who are complaining about this stuff are going to like Java any better. Particularly the scripting crowd.

My wishlist for Java, things like a USB API and a sane way to be a first-class application on the underlying OS, remain very much off Sun's radar. jdic might help on the latter point, we'll see.

As for dev names, I suggest that we petition to start using Homestar Runner characters as version names. "Oh, you're still using Strong Bad... you need to upgrade to The Cheat."

-invalidname

Tue, 06/15/2004 - 13:44 — cooper (not verified)

RE: What is it with the friggin cat names? (J2SE 1.5 snapshots

I couldn't agree more. Really the only thing I see in these new "features" that I think will save me time is the Generics/Collections support. Everything else is either (a) not really saving you that much code or (b) too fugly to look at for my taste.

>>My wishlist for Java, things like a USB API and a sane way to be a first-class application on the underlying OS, remain very much off Sun's radar. jdic might help on the latter point, we'll see.

Support for USB would be awesome. I would also like to see some of the more common peripheral APIs (TWAIN, a big one) show up in Java.

JDIC has some neat stuff, but really, aside from accessing the application handler registry on the OS, there is nothing there that I don't think you get better from WebStart.

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