Brett McLaughlin's Blog

Tiger's Out -- Will It Matter?

Surfing over to the weblogs site, it seems that every weblog I read is about Tiger (Java 5). That's no surprise, by any means, as this release is officially a "big deal" (TM). And I actually think Tiger is pretty cool -- generics have been missing for a while, enums are convenient, and things like for/in (or foreach, or enhanced for, or whatever else you want to call it) are just niceties that make Java feel more mature.

That said, with maturity there is often a longer adoption curve. People have settled into Java -- presumably 1.4.x almost everywhere by now -- and upgrading is no longer the norm. It's a pretty extensive process. So my first bit of wondering is to whether people are just going to jump on Tiger. I mean, there's a part of me that suspects Tiger will just be making a splash on real production systems by next year's JavaOne. Yes, I know that seems a long time away, but when something works, it's hard to chance breaking it.

And as Daniel Brookshier points out, Tiger is at least a few months away from being available on OS X. And yes, you can get (really expensive) access to early copies, but that's just not the same. With more and more Java guys on OS X machines (I'm on my G5 as I type this, with my PowerBook [alas, an old 15"] humming on the side desk), this is a real detriment. In fact, the other day I was writing an article on enumerations for IBM, and had to drag out my very heavy PC to test my code. Uggghhh!

Another particularly troublesome development is all the new error- and warning-checking going on in Tiger. Don't get me wrong; this is "long-term-good". But in the meantime, code that runs fine on both Java 1.4 and 1.5/5/Tiger (got to get that naming right) literally spews warnings under Tiger. Lots of folks aren't going to be too happy about all those new "lint" warnings. And, even more imporantly, lots of peoples' bosses won't be happy with them.

So you tell me -- is Tiger in use at your work? I'm not talking about you at home on some beater box. I'm talking about either being tested for, or put into, production systems. Let me know... I'm completely intrigued!

Comments

• I don't speak for my employers but I think that the initial burden will be on testing. My view is that for all Java-based systems we may need to sanity-check them with TIger. For systems where test planning is being done post-Tiger's release at least one OS/JDK combination should be fully tested on Tiger.

  For implementation, once Tiger is seen as stable there's no reason for us not to embrace it on the server side (WIndows, Linux, Solaris) - it is only a download after all. For the client-side the Mac is important so I imagine we are at least a year away from that being feasible.

  Just my 2p.

  Ian.
  

  Posted by: ifairman on October 02, 2004 at 03:35 AM

• I've begun reading up on the new features and cautiously doing some testing, but before we can even consider a move there will have to be versions for AIX and SCO Unix available (in several versions each) as that's what our customers (and we ourselves) use serverside (which is where all our Java is located).

  Posted by: jwenting on October 04, 2004 at 02:19 AM

• I fell victim to Mac fever for awhile, but recovered quickly. I was no more productive on the Mac than I was under my wintel machine running XP. My wife loves it though. In the end it's all about productivity. I also doubt that a lot of corporate Java development is being done on the Mac.

  Meta-data may be the feature that pushes Tiger into production faster than any of the other features. Tool vendors will be able to embrace meta-data to simplify the complexities of the products they offer.

  On the desktop startup time alone will be reason enough for many to make Tiger the standard runtime for their applications.

  In short, Tiger matters.

  Posted by: rabbe on October 04, 2004 at 05:33 AM

• Websphere isn't there or will be there for a long, long time. They aren't even at 1.4 yet and we expect 1.5? No way. Maybe in 1-2 years.

  Posted by: smartinumcp on October 04, 2004 at 06:48 AM

• I write software for military applications. Government agencies are always wary of new releases of software. Everything has to be 'approved' by a committee of so-called experts. I doubt they will let me upgrade to Tiger for about 2 years.

  Posted by: jeremyzacker on October 04, 2004 at 07:43 AM

• We do various projects server-side and Swing.
  Servers still on 1.4 but Swing apps aready on Tiger.
  No problems been met while migrating.
  Just one, we can't use our widgets withing IntelliJIDEA GUI builder, we have to build them with 1.4 version.
  But I am shure that it will be fixed soon.

  You right about websphere, this why we don't use it :)
  Let them be in their world by themself :)
  

  Posted by: ivanlatysh on October 04, 2004 at 07:54 AM

• Stupid Questions 16: What's the Difference Between Wildcard Generics and no Genericsw

  Posted by: 3ufblogg on July 17, 2007 at 02:05 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.