At 01:31 PM 7/21/99 +1000, you wrote:
>Gilbert Carl Herschberger II wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday, 20 July 1999, Sean Cribbs wrote:
>> >I have Heise's code. It doesn't work on the new JDK.
>>
>> Heise's code
>> should work today on a JDK 2.0 just as it did when it was written.
>
>SwingToolkit isn't exactly a 100% pure Java application. The sort of
>task SwingToolkit is designed to do requires a lot of trickery and you
>can't expect it to work when Sun makes the slightest change to its
>libraries. This is the sort of software that needs to be updated
>frequently to be compatible with new JVMs. Any code that is close to the
>core of JOS is likely to have this same attribute.
When you build a platform, you must act responsibly. You must not undermine
your own customers. I do expect it to work. I can and should expect it to
work. What gives Sun the right to break all my code? What gives Sun the
right to make even the slightest change to its libraries? There is no
justification for it. We're all worse off because Sun imagines that it's
acceptable. Why do you accept it? It doesn't have to be this way.
>I don't expect that standard JOS applications will run into the same
>problems. I have certainly not encountered any problems.
You need to raise your expectations. Java, with its interface mechanism and
very large namespace, has the potential to maintain perfect compatibility.
Java has this potential even if Sun doesn't see it.
Haven't you suffered poor quality software long enough? It is poor quality
to build a platform that doesn't last. Java 1.1 is a platform. In spite of
what Sun wants, that platform is going to be around for more than two
years. People have invested heavily in Java 1.1. What gives Sun the right
to throw all their customer's code away? Who's code is it anyway?
And I don't want JOS to become obsolete the moment that Java 3.0 is
released by Sun Microsystems. Why should I waste my time?
>> Isn't that what Write Once really means?
>No. Write Once means that if you write an application against Swing
>1.02, it will run on any Java platform that has Swing 1.02 without
>having to rewrite it. If a Java platform has Swing 1.1, your application
>needs to be upgraded to work with the new Swing. It is possible to have
>both versions of Swing installed on your computer and run different
>applications against different versions of swing as necessary.
Think about what you're saying. You're saying that it is acceptable to port
your Java applications from one version of Java to the next...when you
don't have to. I think Write Once means Write Once, without qualification.
It does not mean what Sun Microsystems says it means. It does not write
once per version. There must be no fine print.
I don't want to write once per version. Neither do any of my customers. To
hear that it was possible to write once, and only once, was an inspiration
to us all. It got the whole industry excited again. Sun doesn't mean write
once when they say Write Once. Sun is lost. That doesn't mean that I have
to be lost just like they are.
>Having two versions of the JDK installed is another thing, though, and
>could be difficult to handle in JOS. Luckily, JDK 1.2 is largely
>backward compatible with JDK 1.1. One obvious difference is in the
>threads API but Java developers have had sufficient warning to stop
>calling stop() that there are unlikely to be many problems when
>upgrading to JDK 1.2.
Largely backward compatible is another way of saying incompatible. It is
either compatible or it's not. If it's mostly compatible, almost
compatible, slightly compatible, it is incompatible. Incompatible is
unacceptable.
Sufficient warning is another way of saying insufficient architecture.
There should be no reason to warn people about added functionality. Warning
implies that there is some kind of threat. How could added functionality be
a threat to you? When you add functionality properly, there is no warning,
only good news. You can do things that you've never been able to do before.
You can do things with less effort than before.
We add functionality all of the time. That is the mainstream of what we do.
That may be all we do. We should not be afraid of adding functionality. It
should not the enemy. If it is, there can be only one conclusion: we are
doing something wrong.
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