Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Quick note about Java versions

When you download JRE or JDK, you see versions like jdk1.5.0_22, jdk1.6.0_21, etc
When you read doc, you see things like Java5, Java6, etc

What gives?

The idea behind Java versioning was x.y.z - where x is the major release number. The idea was that any change in x implied a very significant change - something that will not be backward compatible, a paradigm change, a point of serious transition.

A change in x would cause so many problems to so many people that at that point they will have to rename Java to Mocha!

So in real life, x always is 1 - so people have resorted to referring to Java version by y - hence Java5, Java6, etc

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