migrating from java 1.5

[Reda Mokrane]

We are using java 1.5.0_11 , we want to move to the newer version but stable version of java.
Which version should we move to?

[Pat Farrell]

1.6 update 6 is latest stable. But can I ask, why change? Java 6 brings nearly nothing over 1.5. I would think long and hard before migrating working code. New code, sure, I'd start with Java 6.

[Ray Hsieh]

Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
1.6 update 6 is latest stable. But can I ask, why change? Java 6 brings nearly nothing over 1.5. I would think long and hard before migrating working code. New code, sure, I'd start with Java 6.

If we're talking about syntactic sugar or language features addition, sure, Java 6 brings little over 1.5. But beyond that, there are many reasons why one would want to change to Java 6:

1. Better Swing performance
2. Better facilities to monitor running production systems
3. Better error messages on memory problems
4. Improved performance
5. Improvement in the garbage collectors

etc., etc.

Even if you're not using Swing, your server apps will still benefit from the rest of the enhancements.