Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Many companies are still using Java 1.1 ?

As many blog readers know, Bruce Eckel posted a thoughtful piece on Java vis-a-vis closures and language features. As an aside, he writes:

People who don't want to deal with these changes don't upgrade, and those people tend not to upgrade anyway, out of conservatism. Many companies are still using Java 1.1 for that reason.
That caught my eye. Java 1.1, really?

At the beginning of meetings, the StL Java User Group often holds informal polls to see which versions of Java are being used. From that, and from common sense, I respect that JDK 1.3 and 1.4 are still widely used. I wouldn't be surprised if JDK 1.2 is out there somewhere, in much fewer numbers.

But JDK 1.1 ? To the point that one can say "many companies" ?

An Informal Poll

Enlighten me, readers. Which version of the JDK are you using? What was the lowest version you have used in the last 2 years? I've been on JDK 1.6 for the last 2 client sites, but I realize that is quite rare.

13 comments:

  1. My instinct tells me most companies use 1.4.

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  2. It depends on the application, we still have software which only runs on specific JRE's. Of of my head, Oracle Discoverer requires Sun's JRE 1.3 and refuses to run on anything newer. I suspect this is a common scenario, why tinker with the JRE and risk trouble when you can just have multiple JVM's running.

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  3. My current project switched from JDK 1.4 to JDK 5 in early 2007. But we are compiling with the "-source 1.4" flag, which means we are using 1.4 languages features but 1.5 libraries.

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  4. i really doubt if there is anybody using Java 1.1 seriously. Place i work switched Java 5 like 2 years ago. We also use Java 6 at least on the client side for new projects. One way of doing this smoothly is getting away from "some" Oracle or IBM stuff as much as possible.

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  5. Companies that write code for people will generally be on 1.4+ due to app server support. However, companies that write libraries/toolkits to be used by other code (like where I work), may have to support some very very old jdks, it is often a selling point over open-source, although a pretty silly one, which generally moves along with the times and just to keep existing customers happy :)

    BTW when I say very very old, I mean 1.1. There are still a few places where I have to support this (places like the magical world of netscape). Interestingly enough though I have never had to support anything on 1.2 (weird situation of supporting 1.1 and 1.3+) and I am seeing less of 1.3 these days.

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  6. I work for a company that sells to Java developers so we have to know what platform they're on. I don't have hard numbers but 1.4 still seems to be the most popular platform, with people converting to 1.5/1.6 in the past year faster than any previous year that I've noticed. 1.3 is still encountered but rarely. I can't remember running into 1.2 or 1.1, even 5 years ago. Until the big changes in 1.5 and to a lesser degree 1.4 there just wasn't much reason NOT to upgrade JDK.

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  7. Thanks for the input, folks...

    A good sanity check, though unscientific: it seems like JDK 1.1 is very rare

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  8. Java ME platform is based on Java 1.1 actually, and there are quite a lot of development here now.

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  9. Anyone who still uses 1.1 probably horded canned goods in right before y2k.

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  10. @Skipper_Joe Now that is an interesting point...

    I still have the feeling that Eckel is off the mark though. (I acknowledge it was just an aside in his article).

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  11. @Michael agree with you. I think Eckel exaggerated a bit :)
    We use Java ME not because of conservatism, but because we have no much choice, if we want to sell software for certain devices :(

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  12. Anybody has any idea how many Java development teams or companies are out there?
    I'm trying to estimate the potential market for a Java development tool...

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  13. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE SCOPE OF JAVA IN THE CORPOREATE SECTOR

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