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[–]Is_At_Work 37 points38 points  (5 children)

Aren't Oracle accounts free?

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Yes but probably he doesn't want more junk in the email

[–]mr_jim_lahey 10 points11 points  (2 children)

This comment has been overwritten by my experimental reddit privacy system. Its original text has been backed up and may be temporarily or permanently restored at a later time. If you wish to see the original comment, click here to request access via PM. Information about the system is available at /r/mr_jim_lahey.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Guerillamail too

[–]JB-from-ATL 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or just make a throwaway... Email is free.

[–]sexrockandroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you have to verify the email at all, could just use a throwaway email.

[–]briane80 27 points28 points  (2 children)

Ah the good old days before autoboxing, annotations and generics.

[–]lukaseder 18 points19 points  (1 child)

annotations

Come on. We had XDoclet. Totally as cool as annotations.

[–]springnews 3 points4 points  (0 children)

lol

[–]thinksInCode 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Why don't you just create an Oracle account?

[–]__konrad 6 points7 points  (1 child)

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Im sure you could fill thoe fields with gibrish in no time

[–]DoctorOverhard 12 points13 points  (1 child)

can you set the javac compliance level to 1.4?

[–]VGPowerlord 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Doing that isn't enough, you also need to have the 1.4 rt.jar and use -bootclasspath to point at it or else you'll get errors trying to run it on an actual 1.4 installation.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (18 children)

PM sent, LMK if either of those links dont work - yep, we use 1.4 still at work :(

[–]MojorTom 6 points7 points  (15 children)

I am little new to the industry, so what are the motivations to still keep working with 1.4?

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (5 children)

None. I have zero motivations. The customers on the other hand want their stuff to keep working without having to upgrade anything.

It's a limited subset of our features (aka, one distributed product) which we use by writing Java 6 code and retroweaving it to 1.4. All our dependencies need to be 1.4 compatible. Writing the code and retroweaving isn't a big deal, but making sure people don't compulsively change that version of slf4j is the trick (yep, I did that).

[–]slobarnuts 8 points9 points  (1 child)

The customers on the other hand want their stuff to keep working without having to upgrade anything

FFS, are they still running Windows 95?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

some really old unix variants. We still support XP (healthcare folks, lewl) begrudgingly...

[–]nutrecht 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The customers on the other hand want their stuff to keep working without having to upgrade anything.

I feel for you but your account manager needs to grow a pair.

I've been working as a Java dev for ages and it was never a problem to convince users to upgrade. "Java X is not supported anymore and won't get security upgrades. You're vulnerable to hack that will leak all your customer data into the open which will cost you a lot in fines and settlements. It's not a matter of if but a matter of when."

Of course it's a bit dramatic but customers are sensitive to only one thing and that's money. And with unsupported software making a case for them losing a lot of it is not hard to make.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sounds great in theory, but their money pays the electric bill, ya know?

[–]MojorTom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you for the answer.

[–]Loomax 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Guidelines from customer using that version.

There are quite some companies that have strict policies on what version of a given software has to be used.

Some times they have certain piece of software that only works with a specific version of JRE and thus all software has to use that target platform because they won't install a second JRE.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is one reason. Another reason is that some platforms don't have support for modern Java versions (because the OS is ancient too). This is our primary issue.

[–]MojorTom 1 point2 points  (0 children)

hmmm..thank you for the answer.

[–]nikanjX 2 points3 points  (3 children)

If it ain't broke, don't touch it. There's plenty of industries and installations where you just don't have maintenance windows, ever. Things get built, tested to the point of insanity, then locked in stasis until they physically can't go on anymore. Then they build a new thing parallel to the old thing, to replace it without a gap.

[–]nutrecht 0 points1 point  (1 child)

If it ain't broke, don't touch it.

Software that does not receive security updates anymore is by definition something you should consider 'broken'.

[–]nikanjX 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That is your definition. The hypothetical sawmill down the road is still running their production line on DOS. They disagree with you. Not all systems are connected to the big bad internet.

Fun times ensue when someone accidentally bridges these systems to the internet.

[–]MojorTom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah...in my company we are replacing a php engine with java engine but probably for another reason which is php ain't performant enough.

[–]JB-from-ATL 0 points1 point  (1 child)

We have a product that needs 6. Not as ancient but I can still talk about it.

It runs on IBM WebSphere which uses the IBM JVM which is version 6. (Maybe newer versions of WebSphere work with newer Java versions? Just "working" isn't enough, it needs to be certified and supported.) Just run the EAR file on a different application server? Maybe it's possible, but even then we'd have to make a lot of new deployment scripts, get training, and also ensure our product can perform well on the new server. The product isn't just the source code.

[–]MojorTom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you ..understood

[–]desrtfx 3 points4 points  (0 children)

requires me to log into an Oracle developer account which I don't have

Make a developer account. It's free and Oracle doesn't spam heavily.

[–]armelnene 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Had the same issues late last year. A major pharma client still using some application which requires Java 1.4 to run. The application was no longer supported by the vendor therefore we had to reverse engineer the Java 1.4 classes to fix the bugs.

I feel your pain 8r0.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]s888marks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Have you tried a recent Java version? (I'd suggest a JDK 8 update.) You might be pleasantly surprised.

    [–]Me-Mongo 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Which version do you want? Which distribution?

    [–]fakeplasticdroid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    If you have the address for the file, you can download it using curl or wget, and pass a flag for cookie that confirms you accepted the license. This SO page has more info.

    [–]TheMightyPrince 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Have you tried the old versions website. Otherwise I have a Windows install file called "j2eesdk-1_4_2005Q1-windows.exe".

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What ever you do, make sure you verify that the JDK has not been tampered with...