Still using an old JDK? Why?

I was interested in how prevalent JDK 1.4 and earlier were in production so I created a very short poll (3 questions, only the first is required). It will take you mere seconds to complete.

Take the poll!

Or you can just freeload and see the results.

UPDATE: It seems the text parts of the poll aren’t publicly available on the poll site, so I’ll post them here periodically.

We’re stuck (for other reasons) on a particular application server version that doesn’t support a newer JDK. If so, what application server and version is keeping you there?

WebSphere 6 (or unspecified) – 16
WebSphere 5 – 14
WebSphere 4 – 1
Weblogic 8 – 8
Weblogic 7 – 1
Weblogic 6 – 1
JBoss 4 – 1
JBoss 3 – 1
Oracle ADF/UIX on OC4j 10.1.2 (i hate my job) – 1
Oracle App Server 10g R2
ATG – 2
Akamai Edge – 1
ColdFusion MX 6 – 1
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 – 1
SAP Web App Server 6.40 – 1
ias – 1
BES 6.5
IBM Content Manager
My IDE doesn’t support > 1.4

I’d to like to upgrade but just haven’t had time yet. If so, when do you think you will upgrade?

Within:

few weeks – 2
6 months – 6
1 year – 3
- - When we have time</ul> Anything else you want to mention on this topic?
  - Upgrading requires potentially doing a large amount of retesting so these days apps will stay on an older 1.X version knowing that it doesn’t have all the features but knowing that it works and there are no new surprises [which there were *LOTS* of in the past keeping on the bleeding edge.
  - Using Java 5 currently, and just too lazy to get the whole company to upgrade to 6. There’s not that much compelling stuff in 6 to force the issue.
  - A Swing app has rendering glitches running under JRE6, but looks fine under JRE5. We could fix it, but no one has the time because it’s deemed lower priority then adding features.
  - Java 1.4.1_06 is the latest for SGI Irix
  - Have been moving from 1.4 to Java 6 as a background task for a year now, but the server config is very 1.4-oriented and not as simple as switching a link to a java/current directory…
  - unsupported HW platform (Tru64 Unix)–if you can get HP to upgrade JDK 1.4 (I’ve asked already) I’d take 1.5 in a heartbeat.
  - I never want to go back to 1.4 (or earlier), the features added in 5 are way too useful.
  - Haven’t seen anything really compelling about SE 6 to convince me to upgrade. SE 7 looks interesting, though.
  - Actually building and running with J2SE 5.0 but with 1.4 compatibility.
  - Mostly stalled because in a big company where change = risk = oh no! cant do that!
  - Upgrading server this release to Java 6.
  - SOE of clients prevents upgrading of clients. Will give them notice of this shortly.
  - Business does not want to force clients to upgrade.
  - JavaME (MIDP) is still in 1.1 years! (no collections!)
  - ATG is crazy. My client is crazy to persist with the ATG appserver and hence jdk 1.4 when jdk 1.6 could give 4 times as much performance!
  - Can’t migrate to 1.6 API features as Apple, in their infinite wisdom, only support x86_64 on their latest release of OS X.
  - new Websphere is coming……..
  - Some stupid 3. party apps test for spezific java version, and bail out if the version is “unknown”, like newer then 2003, because the app has not been updated since then.
  - Lots of my customers are still thinking about or in the process of migrating to Java 5, and it takes lots of time. Often, it’s indeed because a crappy app server of choice isn’t ready for this new version :-(
  - Akamai have JDK1.6 in Beta, so hopefully we’ll be able to upgrade to that in the future
  - Mostly client side apps, so it’s more a case of what versions we officially bless than what we’re using to develop on (both 1.5 and 1.6 in both cases though)
  - Blame Apple!! We develop a commercial product and we simply must work on Windows, Linux and Mac. On Windows and Linux we can ship our own JVM. On Mac we’re stuck with whatever Apple release. This sux.
  - The only reason we haven’t moved to Java 6 is that Apple have only released on 10.5 (on some chipsets). They’ll never release Java 6 for 10.4, so we have to wait until most of the market has moved to 10.5 (that’s gonna be a while).
  - If Sun can ship Mac JVMs that would be great! Or twist Apple’s arm to release Java earlier for their platforms. :)
  - We use WbLogic 6 on Solaris 8. Perhaps there’s no later JDK version for it, but I’m not sure. Anyway we don’t update server/OS for the reasons I’ve stated above.
  - Had to upgrade a legacy app from 1.4.2 – biggest reaction was “Wow, that’s a lot of Generic Raw Type warnings”. We probably had around 500 of them.
  - I can’t wait to do the upgrade, but it’s a production system with real users so I have to make sure things work before I pull the trigger (and shoot 1.4.2_03).
  - My company’s product ships with an embedded JVM that only gets upgraded every few major releases.
  - Stupid manager
  - Newer JKD version is not ‘approved’ for Application I am customizing.
  - If it aint broke … why break it?
  - There are just too many things changed with each version of Java and everybody doesn’t have time to dig into old source and change it.
  - We’re stuck on Java 5 for applets in Mac OSX.
  - I’d imagine that some developers are stuck on JDK 1.3 since that’s what BD-J and Tru2Way are based on.
  - Mainly our problems with upgrading to Java 5 are due to Xerces issues.
  - I need to support Mac OSX 10.3 users (as well as Windows and Linux) – that limits me to Java 1.4.2. My code is tested on other versions, but has to run under 1.4.2.
  - Some newer Java features, such as generics, have enough issues with them, that I don’t often use them even when available.
  - There is not much in java 6, java 5 has some stuff, but I think that the academic types are stuffing in a bunch of junk we really don’t need. My two cents! However, we are in the process of rolling out our product in java 6 just to keep pace.
  - JRocket sucks.
  - It’s way more painful then it should be to upgrade.
  - FYI, all the developers hate sticking to 1.4. NetWeaver 7.1 uses Java EE 5, but our sales contracts require 7.0.
  - stuck with 1.5 for the time
  - Our product is a Java IDE. We are still supporting J2SE 1.4 because some users haven’t upgraded yet :P
  - An upgraded version of Java would have to be installed on the client PCs. The users don’t have the authority; their system administrators would have to do it. The admins are dragging their heels. It can be done with SMS. But that has to be negotiated months in advance. And our leaders dragged their heels for months during the window when it could be done. So now we have to wait another year!!!! :-[
  - As for business requirements… Our users need Java 6, for the performance improvements it gives to their local Derby databases. But we can’t get it to them. :-[
  - We shall wait for JDK 10.1.5.3_12 and do one big upgrade.
  - JDK1.5 is taking the position of what JDK1.3 (Java2) did 5-7years back. But I don’t understand why sun is pusing jdk1.6 by framing all its tooling energy around it? If they could make profiling and testing tools with backporting until JDK 1.5 then most other production systems will move to 1.5 rather than playing a waiting game on JDK1.6 to stabilize.
  - We try to be compatible to Android and to some J2ME dialects. For this reason we ship our products in versions for earlier JDKs also.
  - I’d been working with Java 5 for two years before I came to work in a bank, and I miss the new features. Unfortunately risk aversion is king here, and the testing resource does not exist.
  - No Java SE 6 for 32 bit Macintosh
  - constrained by client-side jvm installations, and even have to go back as far as MS java (1.1!)…… :’(
    
    At home my Mac’s JDK is pathetic; I can’t even upgrade to Leopard
  - Why upgrade if its working fine.
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_Last updated: July 15th, 333 voters total_
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Pure Danger Tech

Still using an old JDK? Why?

Take the poll!