

A Java old timer reminisces - Oak, 0XCAFEBABE, Green Threads, RuntimeException - suprgeek
http://suprgeek.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/a-java-old-timer/

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alex_stoddard
"What is the meaning of the name 'RuntimeException' ? Why is the class so
named? Think about this for a minute ... ALL exceptions are thrown at runtime
right?"

That has been bothering me subconsciously for years! It is very nice to have
the explanation for the name:

"Recall that Java has a class called as the “Runtime” class – an abstracted
representation of the underlying Java Virtual Machine that allows us to add
hooks and get information. So the simple answer to “What is the meaning of the
name RuntimeException” is “It is an exception thrown by the Runtime itself”
rather than any particular piece of code."

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jballanc
While I'm not a Java developer, I was trained on Java in the late 90s and knew
about Oak, Green Threads, and the RuntimeException class. 0xCAFEBABE caught me
off-guard, though, because I have always known that as the magic number
designating Mach binaries on OS X. Anyone know what the connection might be?

~~~
JMostert
It's quite possible there is none, and they're independent "inventions". There
aren't that many four-letter words composed of hex digits (by my reckoning,
the only common ones are BABE, BEAD, BEEF, CAFE, DADA, DEAD, DEAF, DEED, FACE,
FADE and FEED), and stringing two together to get a magic number must be a
popular pastime. In fact, Wikipedia has a list of them at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_%28programming%29> under "magic
debug values", which demonstrates that 1337 can get you some more.

~~~
mahmud
In the late 90s, I cracked a shareware but didn't do it too well, it was a
quick and dirty jump flip; the developer was testing for cracking attempts,
and as soon as I left the debugger and stepped back into ring-3 I notice my
Windows start button now read "0xDEADBEEF".

~~~
pavlov
It takes some courage to admit that on a site populated by software
entrepreneurs.

(I'm not condemning you -- but I do think that cracking shareware is the
computer equivalent of meticulously planning how to steal coins from the
collection plate at a slum church.)

