Java SE 6 Released

twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support. It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting project's home page documents many other available scripting languages, including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support (For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without restarting the server). Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through their Developer Services program."

Re:Downloads page still stupid

[david.given]

But as a user, it always amazes me how hard it is to navigate Java's downloads.

Yeah. Sun's Java web pages quite frankly are horrific beyond all reason. I dread every time I have to go and find something there --- and frequently I just fail. The last thing I tried to get was the Linux wireless toolkit for developing J2ME apps. I managed to find 2.4 (not supported by EclipseME, which I was using.) I managed to find 2.2. But could I find 2.3? Like hell.

If there's anyone from Sun listening, could you please find whoever is responsible for those web pages and fire them? It's this ghastly maze of long, meaningless product titles, menus that go in loops, undefined terms, endless minutely different product specs, pointless registration systems (which makes me very grateful for BugMeNot)... actually finding the useful information there is it's just too hard. If your web site is so complex and badly designed that people would rather give up than try and figure out, then, I'm afraid, you fail.

about time

[Billly Gates]

You can finally have apps that look alot more like win32 or gnome apps without using swt or some other less standard api. Also this release uses some Apple technology with their jdk by offering dynamic class loading. Startups should be alot faster. This and java7 which is already in development should be really exciting. Sun has been putting out alot of java releases recently due to .NET and competition is good.

Re:Funny I am still with jdk 1.4

[gumpish]

It's not J2SE anymore. Now it's just Java SE. (Although we still have the 5 (but really 1.5), 6 (but really 1.6) silliness, but it's a step in the right direction.

Re:Is it any faster for client-side apps?

[0xABADC0DA]

Java GUIs have traditionally been 'slow' because they are double-buffered by default, and as a consequence they redraw completely before displaying. Hardware simply wasn't fast enough to do this gracefully -- it's only recently that most gnome/kde applications and some xp ones are expected to be double-buffered.

The double-buffering also lead to lots of inefficient widget redrawing, like for a while each widget was cleared with the bg color before being redrawn even if it then say put an image say over its whole area.

The other major slowdown was because Java's graphics were much more advanced than necessary, for example lines of width != 1 with end and joint caps, antialiasing, clipping regions (instead of boxes), custom renderers, etc. This made it difficult to integrate with the simple hardware acceleration at the time. Native apps had jaggy lines and solid colors as the main features.

Re:Is it any faster for client-side apps?

[samkass]

More information can be found at Chris Campbell's blog [java.net], but yes, graphics are much faster in JDK 6 especially with the OpenGL pipeline turned on, although they were hardly "slow" in JDK 5. Also, the JIT compiler has been largely reworked to improve codegen (especially with -server flag specified).

Another common complaint about Java UIs is that the dynamic loading/binding/compiling/optimizing makes things slow the first time anything is done, a little less slow the second time, then reasonably zippy from then on. So the longer you work in a Java app, the faster it gets. In any case, I code in Java IDEs all day long and they don't seem any slower than native apps.

Re:Funny I am still with jdk 1.4

[tomservo84]

(Although we still have the 5 (but really 1.5), 6 (but really 1.6) silliness, but it's a step in the right direction.

It goes right along with Solaris 8 = SunOS 5.8, Solaris 10 = SunOS 5.10, etc., etc....it must be a Sun-ism.

Re:The Tiger still seems fresh

[bwt]

Java 1.5 introduced major syntax enhancements and changes. The three big features of 1.6 are scripting, profiling/debugging, and JIT performance. The nature of these changes makes it much easier to migrate, unless perhaps you had an app that was heavy on BSF (bean scripting framework), in which case you need to migrate.