Sunday, November 02, 2008

Java 1.4.2 joins the undead

Java 1.4.2 died last week. According to Sun's "End of Service Life" page, Java 1.4.2 went EOSL last Thursday. The only trouble is, it's still moving.

Java 5 (SE) was released in 2004 and Java 6 has been out since 2006. Java 5 will, in fact, also be at EOSL in less than a year. (You might call it the Java "Dead Man Walking" Edition.) And yet, if you do a Google search on any of the following, guess what you get?

java.lang.Object
java.lang.Class
java.lang.Exception
java.lang.Throwable
java.lang.Runtime
java.awt.Image
java.io.File
java.net.URL
JComponent
JFrame

If you do a Google search on any one of these, the very first hit (in every case) is a link to Sun's Javadoc for the 1.4.2 version of the object in question.

A year from now (when Java 5 hits the dirt) I wonder how many of these 10 searches will still take you to 1.4.2 Javadoc? (Remember, Java 5 has been out for almost 5 years and still doesn't outrank 1.4.2 in Google searches.) I'm guessing half of them. What do you think?