Joe Winchester's Java Blog: No More J and No More 2 - Lament We Shall - What Can We Do?

First, we're dropping the "2" from the full edition names. They are now:

-- Java Platform, Standard Edition

-- Java Platform, Enterprise Edition

-- Java Platform, Micro Edition

Rumors of this name change have been flying around for a while but it is now official – the brand has been kicked into the bucket and replaced instead with a more verbose name and “Platform”. This probably isn’t such a bad thing. The 2 was sort of a year 2000 thingy (see Calvin Austin’s JDJ March editorial for the reason behind its name http://java.sys-con.com/read/48538.htm), and as such does feel rather dated. Dating something by the year is always great when it hasn’t been released yet (Windows 95 was kinda cool in August 1994 when it hadn’t yet been released). I remember how much cooler Windows 2000 seemed as a product (can I get one with a “Back to the Future” Marty McFly hoverboard as well please ?). Others play higher trump cards with the future however, such as a Dell Dimension 3000 or USA 300 airlines.Year numbers in your name though not only show how new you are, but also how old as well.

For Java the naming kinda went weird when Tiger got called Java 5 rather than Java 3. I guess it got released around 2005 so maybe there’s a little bit of the calendar in its genes.

More of the memo from Sun’s branding HQ:

When referring to them in shorthand, the word "Java" will be spelled out and there will be no dot zero. For example:

-- J2SE 6.0 will become Java SE 6, and J2SE 7.0 will become Java SE 7

-- J2EE 5.0 will become Java EE 5

-- J2ME will become Java ME because it does not have a versio number

This means you can’t write stuff like “JSE5”. Pity, cause it was an obvious way to shorthand the longer “Java Platform, Standard Edition version 5”, but I guess Java SE 5 works.

As for the period (what we in England call a decimal point - a period is something else outside the scope of this blog entry), this too is no more. The memo conclues:

(Future updates to the platform will be noted as 'updates' and therefore not affect the platform version number meaning there will never be a version 6.1 or 6.2, so there is no need to keep the dot zero.)

I actually think this is a good change in naming. There was too much confusion beforehand, although I am not quite sure what the first update will be called.  Will it be “Java Platform, Standard Edition 6, update 1”. If so I’d love to shorten it to JSE6.1 because it’s shorter and captures all of the required information, however apparently it’s not to be.

J2ME, J2SE and J2EE RIP

posted Tuesday, 8 November 2005 12:45 PM EST