This is old news, but here’s Sun’s explanation for their confusing Java version numbers, I think it is really funny:

Both version numbers “1.5.0″ and “5.0″ are used to identify this release of the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition. Version “5.0″ is the product version, while “1.5.0″ is the developer version. The number “5.0″ is used to better reflect the level of maturity, stability, scalability and security of the J2SE.

The number “5.0″ was arrived at by dropping the leading “1.” from “1.5.0″. Where you might have expected to see 1.5.0, it is now 5.0 (and where it was 1.5, it is now 5).

I’m sure some poor guy was told “here’s our incomprehensible decision, now document it”.

1 Comment »

  1. Blame marketing. Everyone knows 5.0 is much better than 1.5.x .

    Comment by didier — 31/8/2005 @ 21:00

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