Hello-
I suppose I'll be the dissenting vote, here, or at least more aggressive.
Dynamic proxy support in 1.3 is what fixes most of the reflection problems
left in 1.2. The use of this could really benefit those who are using
event listeners from Swing or custom classes. Right now, it is terribly
difficult to work around some of these problems. Being able to implement
an interface on the fly is incredible, and absolutely necessary when you
realize you need it.
I think that keeping in mind that Jess 6 won't be out for quite a while,
and that 1.3 is rapidly becoming the "officially" supported JDK, it would
be wise to start planning for it.
The 1.3 JDK also includes HotSpot, which I can see really helping out JESS
users in many situations. There is good incentive for most projects to
move to 1.3, even if 1.3 features aren't being used.
This all being said, I think that most of Jess could be written to use
only 1.2 features, and that 1.3 feature use could probably be fairly well
contained. Looking at the independent Beanshell project, exactly this
approach was taken. Only a few lines needed to be changed in order to
compile under 1.2. But if you happen to use a 1.3 compiled jar under
a 1.2 runtime, it still works except for the features that require 1.3.
Sun has already announced 1.4 will be available near the end of 2001. I
know that seems far ahead into the future, but it does suggest that it is
important to stay as current as possible. The upcoming year will
probably be dominated by 1.3, so let's use it. The stability of Jess 5.x
should satisfy those who wish/need to stay behind.
-Dave Barnett
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