Improving The Java Core Library

dautelle writes "Many Java developers are frustrated by the not-so-open process to improve/correct/augment the Java core libraries. Unless you work for Sun or belong to a JSR expert group, there is very little you can do to influence the future of the Java platform. Even the JCP route can be a frustrating one (e.g. JSR-108 withdrawn by Sun because not enough progress made in a timely manner). To address this serious issue, the charter of the Java Addition to Default Environment (JADE for short) has been extended, along with the release of JADE 7.0. Participation to the jade.* package development is truly open (unlike javax.*). The library already provides numerous useful classes, bug fixes, enhanced implementations of existing classes, etc. Hopefully in the near future, the library could become so useful that it becomes a de-facto complement to the JDK."

Interestin library ... this jade ... but ...

[moro_666]

i have been programming around with java for quite a long time, sometimes indeed i have felt like some c/c++ solutions would be so easy'n'fast'n'economic at some points, but i always have found a working workaround. seems like the jade dudes are not satisfied with that.

the thing that disturbs me about this article is that, it seems like the author would like to have this lib in java. i'm against it. because it provides tools to improve your code in many ways, but at the same time, it somewhat brings java down to the c++ like level, where memory losses and "forgotten" objects are quite common mistakes.

as a separate library, i think jade is great and the next time i'm writing something really complicated i'll surely have a look at it. but at the same time i think it should not be included in java's original libraries cause java newbies would surely make a lot of mistakes by using it and then everyone would blame Java for being so buggy and unusable for them. java has a strong and stable baselib which doesn't provide many ways to make mistakes, jade surely has greater opportunities but also greater flawsources.

however i think that sun should somehow support jade's development and offer at least a link to it under it's downloads page, so people could see that the usual oop model is not the limit and also would avoid inventing the wheel in a lot of cases.

i think sun is being conservative, cause it has always been that way, and it seems a quite secure and reasonable, cause most java apps are more secure and stable than anything else around. they are just concerned about java's reputation and dont want to rush items into their language which would overhaul new java developers and lead to popularity loss of java.

many cool libraries could be real battleaxes in the hands of java, but at the sametime, they could backfire, which sun is just trying to avoid.

keep up the good work on jade :)

xml parser

[raffe]

Has anybody worked with the jade xml parser. Can someone comment? It looks interesting...

Re:An alternative ...

[MemoryDragon]

I dont think the classpath project would be a good idea, they want to emulate the core libs as good as possible. The best point to donate extensions to, is the jakarta commons project which already has many useful extensions and already has become a second core lib to many developers.

Universally true

[pauljlucas]

Many Java developers are frustrated by the not-so-open process to improve/correct/augment the Java core libraries. Unless you work for Sun or belong to a JSR expert group, there is very little you can do to influence the future of the Java platform.

Huh? This is univerally true for any language: unless you're on the ISO C committee, for example, you have very little influence of the future of the C programming language. Ditto for C++, SQL, XQuery, and every other language with a standard. If you want to have an influence, join a committee!