how many of you use 1.5?

I didnt do a lot of work on coding since I started documenting my project .. but I've been using jdk 1.4.2. I havnt test 1.5 yet. How do you feel ... whats the difference between them?

I'm starting to.
But as our customers are mainly running systems for which no 1.5 JVM is as yet available we cannot start using the new features yet for commercial purposes.

I do plan to probably start for the 1.5 SCJD once that's available after taking the 1.4 SCJP hopefully next month (we've ordered the exam voucher but not received it yet so I can't schedule the exam session right now).

1.5 has some nice new features. The option to create a terse new loop without the need for defining an Iterator or loop counters can be nice if you do a lot of looping (which we do).
Autoboxing and unboxing can save quite a bit of typecasting (at least in theory, we don't use a lot of primitives in Collections).
Generics could save a ton of typecasting though and is one thing I have been looking forward to.
Metadata IMO is a step back and should never have been added. I won't be using it most likely.

Performance seems better too, like each new version the runtime is faster than the previous one.

I started learning about it a while back, but each time I learn something about it, I find myself going back to 1.4. I thought the generics were pretty cool. At my school, we use 1.4, and half of my programs won't work on their machines, so I have to wind up converting it back to 1.4. It just seems to me that everyone is sticking to 1.4.

Not really. Many companies are working towards doing new development in 1.5, especially IT shops.
Remember that schools are often way behind the technology curve. Just check the number of threads in the C++ forum from people asking about 15 year old compilers which they are given to use in school.
In the real world those things haven't been used in a decade, yet apparently teachers still think them good enough for classroom use.
As a result these kids will need extensive retraining when they enter the marketplace.

What I'm doing now is using the 1.5 compiler but not the language features.
We compile everything for deployment on a machine running a 1.4 compiler anyway using an ant job.
For experiments I use everything I want :)

So go ahead and learn to tame the Tiger, but keep in mind that in the real world you may as you experience find that you will be faced with older versions (when I started at a new job in 2003 they were still using 1.3, having shortly before upgraded from 1.2. First thing I did there was install 1.4.2. There I had the power, being the in house Java guru, don't expect that in most companies).

in other words: use what you can but always be prepared to step back to something older for whatever reason.

hehe .. yeah testing the new and using the old.

Thank you guys very much, you were both a big help...

Hi everyone,

The new 1.5 seems to work well and i really like the new look and feel.
You should try it

Richard West

yes Richard. It's really nice.
Now if only there were Tiger implementations for SCO OpenUnix and AIX we might be able to switch...

Hi everyone,

The new 1.5 seems to work well and i really like the new look and feel.
You should try it

Richard West

I've got it, and have been using it for a while. I was just wondering if anyone else uses it on a day to day basis.

Also see the blog entry of Narue. She wrote about 1.5