In case you weren't following the Java One coverage, the new naming for the Java platform was announced early this week. Sun is dropping the "2" in the platform name, and the official naming with versions is now Java SE 5, Java EE 5, and Java ME. Although, I heard a very senior Sun official use the terms "JSE" and "JEE", so expect those words to become part of our standard vocabulary too.

The reason for the change is to simplify the naming conventions and focus on the 'Javaness' of the editions. Future point releases to the platforms will be called 'updates' rather than a point release, For example, a fure J2EE point release will be called Java EE update 2 instead Java EE 5.1.

Personally I feel like a monkey when I say "EE" too many times, I think I'll stick with JEE or good old Enterprise Java. :)

I'm glad they're dropping the two.

But why bother including "Edition" in the acronyms? ...SJ, EJ, and MJ for Standard Java, Enterprise Java, and Micro Java.

And for when acronyms become passé: Javast, Javænt, and Javami...

I am guessing the word "Java" has to be in the titles for marketing reasons. OR may be they want to sound more like Microsoft .Net (Java SE).

Yes ! true!
it seems same! but i think there is no problem with this! Even Java SE, EE, amd ME sounds more professional.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/06/29/javaone2005.html

Sun Java VP Graham Hamilton discussed the past, present, and future of "Java SE." That's right--no more awkward "Java 2." The awkward terminology has been jettisoned in favor of "Java Standard Edition," abbreviated as "Java SE" (not "JSE," apparently). Furthermore, with the shorter release cycles for major versions, the point releases may be a thing of the past, so the next version is properly "Java SE 6," not "6.0." A similar change is effective for the enterprise and micro editions, although all already-released versions of Java will keep the names they were released with. In other words, the "Tiger" release is still "Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0."
The standard edition is adapting 18-month release cycles, which should allow important features to get out more quickly. The next major version of Java SE, "Mustang," is expected to be released in summer 2006, with Java SE 7, codenamed "Dolphin," to arrive in early 2008.

Two years down the road with new names, my online cross-searches using search engines will require more work on my part (unless search engines have different plans for their alogrithms ;-) )

Say, my search for a topic that involves Enterprise Java will need to involve both the names -- J2EE and the proposed Jave EE in order to find correct answer.

This will fade away as "Java EE/SE/ME" mature.

As a contractor, I have to deal with quite a few recruiters every once in a while (between contracts, doh!).

This will give them and me hell with CV's, I can already see it:
Recruiter: "Your CV states x years of experience in J2EE, do you have any JEE experience?"
Me: "J2EE was rebranded to JEE this year, so it is one and the same thing."
Recruiter: "Hmm, really? Well, my client is really looking for someone with a strong background in JEE, and I can't really see that on your CV."
Me: "Aaargh!"

LOL!

Sad but completely true. I remember a recruiter being adamant that he needed someone with 10 years of J2EE, back in about 2000, when I tried to explain I'd been using the APIs and services making up J2EE since before they'd been branded in one spec...

Sad but completely true. I remember a recruiter being adamant that he needed someone with 10 years of J2EE, back in about 2000, when I tried to explain I'd been using the APIs and services making up J2EE since before they'd been branded in one spec...

I've had similar things happen to me several times around J2EE and other technologies and frameworks. Another absolute gem was around "Apache":
Recruiter: "Do you have any Apache experience?"
Me: "Apache what? Http Server? Tomcat? Struts? Commons? Axis? Apache has quite a few projects under their umbrella, so do you have any more specifics?".
Recruiter: "I don't know, just Apache?"
Me "Ok, yeah I have done that quite a bit" (Appeasing him to with what may or may not be a lie just to get past the "matching of (inadequate) acronyms" excercise).

Sad but completely true. I remember a recruiter being adamant that he needed someone with 10 years of J2EE, back in about 2000, when I tried to explain I'd been using the APIs and services making up J2EE since before they'd been branded in one spec...

By the way, ever been asked if you have 10 years of Spring experience? ;)

hehe thats true man :D

I'm actually very keen on dropping the Java 2 bit.....

Recruiter: What versions of Java have you worked with
Me: All versions from 1.0 up to the latest 1.4 (this was a coupd of years back)
Recruiter: Sorry, the client specifically requested Java 2 experience!

Great! I now I can effective double the number of keywords on my resume! I just ask for half the money I used to get. Please don't offshore this position. Please...

You're absolutely right, this change is a disaster for contractors and I wish Sun had thought through the consequences of their decision.

IT Recruiters DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT*, they work entirely by matching keywords. The concept of J2EE being an umbrella specification is already too much for them to grasp. Trying to persuade them that it has changed names as well is like asking a village idiot to act as president of a G8 country.

Here are a few comic illustrations to back up my point:
- I was once asked for 5 years experience of .NET when .NET was only a year old (I guess Anders Hejlsberg might have qualified...)
- One agent was convinced that CORBA was a typo so he "corrected" it to COBRA before passing on my CV to the client
- One agent insisted that the client wanted somebody who knew Java, not J2EE, and appeared to think these were mutually exclusive.

*NB: I'll admit there are some honorable exceptions. If you find a good agent, stick with them!

If that's case, the simple solution is to list all keywords in your resume. Then no dummy agent or resume search engine would miss you. Maybe you have been doing this for too long that you have already forgot.

We are here to look for job instead of trying to be starving philosophers.

The problem is the recruiter then passes on the CV to the client, who will think you're an idiot for listing J2EE and JEE separately.

The challenge is always to dumb down your CV enough for the recruiter to understand it, but not enough that the end client thinks you're as dumb as the recruiter. I wonder if it would be possible to use steganography to embed a "real" CV inside a dumbed down "shell" CV? :-)

The problem is the recruiter then passes on the CV to the client, who will think you're an idiot for listing J2EE and JEE separately.

Very unlikely that they will know the difference either.

I suspect a village idiot has been appointed to act as president of a G8 country not only once, but twice (thank the constitution so it can't be three times)...

Recruiter: "Hmm, really? Well, my client is really looking for someone with a strong background in JEE, and I can't really see that on your CV."

Trying to prevent recruiters from saying/doing stupid things (even those that affect you adversely) is an impossible task. Why even waste the effort?

I remember talking to a recruiter in 1995 who was looking for someone with "Ten years e-commerce experience". The smart recruiters will get it; the dumb ones are simply keyword-matching agents, and most of use are probably smart enough to (a) figure out which is which and (b) get past the dumb ones without lying.

The "What would a recruiter do" (WWARD) test does not seem like a very sound basis for evaluating nearly anything.

Just got an email on a Job today. One of the desired Technical Qualifications: IBM Java Programming Language.

http://www.nationjob.com/job/tope3976/pj/158503

Check this one out -
http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=101&dockey=xml/f/3/f3f7fdd45fc186e331515f9984362edb@activejobs0&c=1&source=1

Is 10 years and 2 months good enough? :)

How about the title on the certification ?
Will they change it too ?

JOE - Java Obsoleted Edition. It used to be called J2DE (Java Too @Deprecated Edition,) We just decided to @deprecade that deprecated edition and invent better one. In accordance with this new change, we decide to add a new feature, a javadoc tag @obsoleted, to the next release.

I propose they should simply mark the "2" as being deprecated and retain backward compatibility :-)

Regards,
    Dirk

Hm..why am I not surprised about this?
I was just getting uneasy about the fact that SUN hadn't renamed anything over the last two months...

As a matter of fact, I don't know many companies besides SUN that are constantly renaming all of their products in half year's turns - the zillions of different former names only for the now-named SUNStudio (or has the name changed again already?) come easily to mind.
Yes, and of course one could always find good reasons for that.
However, no product manager will ever wonder why SUN isn't earning substantial money with their software products (sadly as it is)...

I take it that there's a (rather large!) department at SUN's that's exclusively responsible for devising new names for existing products (and gets paid for as short renaming cycles as possible).