IslandMix - Soca, Reggae, Zouk and Caribbean Entertainment

If you have the time I would like to learn about Java.

Can any of you share a lot of your knowledge? I know some things of course but just the tip of the iceberg.

__________________
``
``
``
``
President Barack Obama!!!!
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Let us work with others to change our communities.

Meh..

lost

__________________
joie de vivre

Take away a man's son, you have truly given him nothing to loose

Well at work we have to figure out what version of Java works for various application but many times you have to test. It is our job to decipher this but there are days when you don't have time to invest. How to determine which version is needed without trying one after the other to test?

Some applications or websites will state you need version 6 update 10 for example.
Others don't suppose the latest or greatest won't work... There are some applications that will only work with one version of Java. Then I learned there are JDKs and JREs if you are going after an older version. Do you lean on the JDK version or the JRE version only?

I am seeking some quick tips off of your findings. I see Java.com has a resource for learning about Java, of course. This is good but I would appreciate first hand experience working with Java.

__________________
``
``
``
``
President Barack Obama!!!!
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Let us work with others to change our communities.

for learning java.. read through sun specifications
for java applications download the most recent jre (runtime enviroment).. you usually only need the jdk if you are doing some coding (compiling).

Thanks.

Now I saw what you said about jre and jdk but if you want both worlds

e.g. If you have Adobe Writer 5.0 installed on your computer it is both a reader and writer so no need to have the Reader separate.

What is similar for Java if you want to do coding and play yahoo games for example. I am guessing JDK right?

__________________
``
``
``
``
President Barack Obama!!!!
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Let us work with others to change our communities.

yep JDK comes packed with a JRE

Niceness, thanks. I'm learning.

__________________
``
``
``
``
President Barack Obama!!!!
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Let us work with others to change our communities.

Well, you can have multiple versions of java installed. However, the most recent version should be backwards compatible (i.e. if you have version 1.6.0_16-b01 it should run 1.5 compiled bytecode). This does not mean that java 1.5 source code can be compiled on 1.6 sdk. In other words, the interpreter is guaranteed to be backwards compatible but the source code itself is not.

Could you expand on the bolded a little bit please. Thanks.

__________________
``
``
``
``
President Barack Obama!!!!
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Let us work with others to change our communities.

This is the fundamental problem that I have with Java. It is a very young language. It is also constantly evolving. In major releases they often deprecate various functions and routines. The resulting bytecode (java is not fully compiled like C or C++) is forward compatible (1.5 bytecode can run on a 1.6 JRE) but if you take code you created for the 1.5 JDK, it may not compile on 1.6 JDK without some modifications. They have gotten much better about this recently but it still happens.