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From: Arved Sandstrom on 6 Feb 2010 04:33
Roedy Green wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Feb 2010 10:21:14 -0800 (PST), zikester <isaacyho(a)gmail.com>
> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>
>> Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I'm trying to install jdk 1.5 EE
>> on my windows 7 box, and the installer says the platform/patch level
>> is unsupported. Is there really no way to develop on jdk 1.5 from
>> Windows 7?
>
> I develop for JDK 1.5 using JDK 1.6 with the target option.

Any particular reason why you would target 1.5? It's past End of Service
Life (EOSL). My oldest home computer is like 6 years old and I'm running
the latest 1.6 JDK on it, and also OpenJDK 7. Except for some occasional
dabbling I do with work-related software (pretty arcane stuff) that
still needs JDK 1.4, 99% of what I do is cool with JDK/JRE 1.6.

I'm not into consumer Java nor applets and all that good stuff, so maybe
I'm missing some good technical reasons here for developing to obsolete
Java versions. What would they be? Note I said _technical_ reasons: the
inability or more often the lack of desire of some small percentage of
the user population to properly upgrade just doesn't cut it.

AHS
From: Peter Duniho on 6 Feb 2010 12:50
Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> Roedy Green wrote:
>>
>> I develop for JDK 1.5 using JDK 1.6 with the target option.
>
> Any particular reason why you would target 1.5?

I can't speak for Roedy, but as a general rule, there is sometimes value
in targeting lower versions of an API, to ensure that specific customers
who can't upgrade can still remain customers.

As an example: on the Mac OS, the only way to get Java 1.6 is to upgrade
to Leopard or higher (OS X 10.5). But not everyone wants to upgrade to
the newer OS version, nor even actually can.

As time goes on, the number of people subject to these restrictions does
go down dramatically, and eventually it makes sense to go ahead and move
up in the API version. But even when that happens, for someone
following that strategy, they will typically still be behind the "latest
and greatest". If the customers of concern are using Macs, then there's
no way to move to the most recent Java version, because Apple is always
at least a version behind.

> [...] Note I said _technical_ reasons: the
> inability or more often the lack of desire of some small percentage of
> the user population to properly upgrade just doesn't cut it.

What about some large percentage of the user population? What about if
some customers are more important than others, even if in the minority?
And frankly, if we are talking about someone else's sales, who are you
to tell them how many customers they can afford to cut off, regardless
of reason?

Pete
From: Peter Duniho on 6 Feb 2010 13:08
Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> Roedy Green wrote:
>> I develop for JDK 1.5 using JDK 1.6 with the target option.
>
> Any particular reason why you would target 1.5?

I should also point out that some customers may have strict
certification requirements that prevent them from upgrading to a new API
version except for very specific reasons and on very specific intervals.

In a perfect world, one would be able to avoid such customers. But
again, some customers may be more important than others, and a developer
that wants to stay in business may not have the freedom to impose their
own version preferences.

Whether any of this applies in Roedy's case, I don't know. If
certification were the issue in Roedy's case, he should not be using JDK
1.6, otherwise he may not be able to detect bugs in the version his
customer is actually running. So we can probably assume that's not
what's going on in his case.

But it's certainly plausible that someone might target earlier versions
and with good justification.

Pete
From: Roedy Green on 6 Feb 2010 15:01
On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:33:21 GMT, Arved Sandstrom
<dcest61(a)hotmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
said :

>
>Any particular reason why you would target 1.5?

If I don't need 1.6 features, I code to 1.5 or even 1.1. I intend for
my code to be inserted in other people's code. The lower that number,
the wider the audience for my work.

When you get many different packages interacting, management can
freeze on a JDK (even 1.4!) because they don't want to spend the money
retesting or tweaking.

The CurrCon applet is written to Java 1.1. I don't want to exclude
anyone from seeing the nationalised prices on my website no matter how
ancient their browser's Java.

The less technical my audience, the lower I aim for.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

Every compilable program in a sense works. The problem is with your unrealistic expections on what it will do.
From: Roedy Green on 6 Feb 2010 15:13
On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:08:16 -0800, Peter Duniho
<NpOeStPeAdM(a)NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>Whether any of this applies in Roedy's case, I don't know.

I got a great set of squawks from Mac users when I once migrated an
app up to 1.6. One of them went over my code and pointed out I was
not using any feature past 1.5. I took it back to 1.5.

I think it was the sales tax calculating app. It just does a few
multiplies (multiplys??) and adds wrapped in a GUI shell. The Canadian
version it turns out is my most popular program. It is used by all
kinds of people who have no knowledge of Java. Many of them cannot
upgrade their Java because of corporate rules, corporate control, or
technopeasant terror. They may use some other app that wants a
particular version of Java and they don't want to rock the boat.
Not to mention that the latest Sun Java version is not available for
all platforms.

It is funny how many people can be using an app. You never know until
you do something that screws them up. As long as everything is
working fine, you never hear from users.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

Every compilable program in a sense works. The problem is with your unrealistic expections on what it will do.
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