

Oracle rebrands Java, breaks Eclipse - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oracle-rebrands-java-breaks-eclipse/2012

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yumraj
This is really an Eclipse f-up than anything.

A better title for this story would have been: _Eclipse bug exposed when
Oracle rebranded Java_

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JoachimSchipper
In the sense that Eclipse is bloated, yes; but there is quite possibly no
portable way to fix this.

And Oracle really should have tested stuff, even if Eclipse did do something
stupid.

~~~
Tamerlin
So you're saying that Oracle should be responsible for the defects in a 3rd
party product?

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nuclear_eclipse
If you're building a _platform_ , yes, you should at least be testing your
point releases against a handful of the most popular applications that run on
your platform, because things like this, even if caused by bad decisions in
those 3rd party applications, look bad against the _platform as a whole_.

If this was a big feature release like JDK7, that's one thing, but a bugfix
release is completely different.

Edit: Everybody would be grabbing for their pitchforks if Facebook all of a
sudden updated their backend and broke FarmVille. It's the same concept.

~~~
sbov
Just to add onto this: a company I worked for was a somewhat heavy user of a
3rd party api, and they integrated our key use cases into their test scenarios
in order to avoid breakage.

Depending upon what percentage of Java developers use eclipse, seeing if it
still works seems fairly reasonable.

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davidw
Wow. They changed a name property - something that you probably shouldn't be
using programmatically a great deal - and it _broke_ Eclipse.

~~~
tptacek
I got the impression that this story wanted me to be irritated at Oracle, but
was left with the impression that this problem has nothing at all to do with
Oracle.

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davidw
Yeah, the title made it look like Oracle did something sneaky and caused a
problem. The problem was someone writing code that was very, very far away
from "write once, run anywhere".

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SoftwareMaven
Anybody who still believes in "write once, run anywhere" has never tried
deploying to multiple platforms. "Write once, debug everywhere" is more like
it, which is why Eclipse has some weird property check that is Windows only in
the first place.

That said, the JVM is probably the best environment for doing cross-platform
deployment.

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stevoski
This is a great example of why software maintenance is so hard. People will
use features of your software in unexpected ways. Even trivial changes to your
software that should be inconsequential are almost always entirely far too
consequential.

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mattmcknight
I find this amusing because in 2002 I downloaded Oracle JDeveloper IDE to try
it out and it replaced files in my JRE directory with their own version that
caused my JBoss to break. They have a lot of experience breaking Java.

On the other hand, this is really an Eclipse bug.

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jmount
Just wow. Using the Java VM non-transparently and hanging a bunch of stuff on
properties and mere conventions seems really slick until it all starts
breaking.

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wazoox
This reminds me of the time when websites improperly checked for the browser
version, breaking down at each release of Mozilla...

~~~
chadgeidel
And how they still "break" with any version of IE that the programmer doesn't
like. Just give me the crapified (text) version already.

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yatsyk
Good example of why we need to use feature detection.

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smackfu
I'm still pissed at them for pushing out a point update that introduced a new
security check that many, many Java applets failed, and that required a JAR
rebuild to get rid of the warning dialog.

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nileshk
If you are already setting the JVM argument for MaxPermSize then I think this
issue wouldn't affect you. For example, put "-XX:MaxPermSize=256m" in
eclipse.ini

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zyb09
How could they not notice Eclipse doesn't work anymore before releasing the
update? Are they forced to use Netbeans?

~~~
m_myers
Well, it could be worse. They could be forced to use Eclipse.

~~~
Karzyn
What would you recommend? I'm not being snarky but actually considering an
editor switch.

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axod
textmate is ok enough :/ IMHO It 'works'.

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noarchy
I draw my code in the sand outside, and then have a scribe enter it into a
terminal at some later point. This 'works'.

But really, having a good IDE isn't a bad thing, is it? Does it make me less
of a tough guy if I use one?

~~~
axod
My IDE is the terminal. I don't want that in a text editor.

I use a text editor to edit text, and a terminal to do everything else.

As long as it can do syntax highlighting, copy paste, line numbering, can show
files/dirs in a tree so you can select files easily, I don't want anything
else.

Obviously I can understand that other people love clicking on "create a
function" in their IDE, or tab completing variable names, or clicking on
"build/run". But it's just not for me. Even the quote/bracket auto-insertion
in textmate drove me crazy until I disabled it. All that extra crap
'refactor!' 'language bundles' etc.

<anecdotal>

The code I have seen (Java) produced from programmers using IDEs has been
universally horrible. Full of duplication useless boilerplate and general
rubbish.

</anecdotal>

If you were writing a novel, would you have a menu with common book
'patterns', or tab complete the character names? For me, it interrupts my
flow.

There is a popular myth that you 'need' to use an IDE to code Java. Which is
just ridiculous. Perhaps it's a self fulfilling prophecy though. Code produced
by IDEs isn't nice to look at so you need to edit it in another IDE, or spend
an hour cleaning out all the rubbish.

</rant against IDEs which I detest>

~~~
wwortiz
You are much better of using an IDE with java unless you want to write
everything yourself using barebones and then do lookups for obscure bits and
pieces that are only a simple completion away in an IDE.

Enjoy your elite way of doing it though.

~~~
axod
I do :) And I enjoy having nice neat tight code as a result. I don't need the
completion, shortcuts etc, because I "know" the code base. Sometimes I need to
grep etc, but knowing, and having a handle on the entire codebase is pretty
useful for when you need to do big sweeping refactoring.

~~~
Tamerlin
I use an IDE, and I write clean, tight code. I don't see your point -- part of
it is that I have far more important things to do with my life than learn the
API, so code completion is a great resource for me when I'm working with 3rd
party libraries or Java libraries that I don't use regularly.

Debuggers are another benefit to using an IDE.

Running my app within NetBeans also makes it easier to deploy and launch a web
application, so that's another bit of tedium that the IDE alleviates.

For me it's a win-win. It takes care of grunt work, I take care of code.

~~~
axod
I also hate debuggers. Tried them, don't like them. They're great for when you
don't have the source code and need to reverse engineer something, but for
finding bugs, I think they're terrible.

Different people like different things though. It sounds like you're doing a
very different kind of development than I do - that whole scary J2EE beans
webapp enterprisey stuff.

~~~
Tamerlin
Well, not quite J2EE, but it is Spring based. Spring relies heavily on magic
that makes tracing code very difficult without a debugger. It wasn't my
choice, and I wouldn't choose it again, but at least it's better than J2EE.

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drivebyacct2
"Who fixes a bug by making something dependent on the dll/exe company name?
Stupid...How are those outsourced indians working for you now Oracle and
Sun!!!!"

Uh, did Oracle/Sun develop Eclipse?

~~~
sandGorgon
SandGorgon's law: _As an online discussion about PROGRAMMING grows longer, the
probability of a comparison involving outsourcing or Indians approaches 1, if
Godwin's law has not already been satisfied_

~~~
korch
I've never been clear on whether stating Godwin's Law is equivalent to it
happening? All of these Internet Laws can be confusing.

~~~
sandGorgon
unless used in a reductio ad hitlerum or a reductio ad outsourcedum situation,
it does not apply.

