Use Java 5 feature in Jdk1.4

I have been getting the itch for a long tome to use Java 5 features like generics, new concurrency (java.util.concurrent), autoboxing, "for each" loop and many more. But sadly I can not do it at work because ColdFusion has to be supported on all application servers. Since many of the application servers are still on J2EE 1.4 and not all of them are compatible with Java 5, we have to write JDK1.4 compliant code. Which means that all those wonderful features of Java5 can not be used for some more time to come. Or so I thought until yesterday when I read Brian Goetz's (of "Java concurrency in practice" fame) article which says that we can use some of the Java features in JDK1.4 also.
At first I was kind of puzzled as in how could that be possible? Did they had these features and they just did not mention about it in JDK1.4 or probably they just sneaked it in 1.4 in last moment but not talk about it because of some reasons.

It dawned to me when I went halfway through the article. It looks like most of these new syntaxes did not need any change in the bytecode instruction set which means that the compiler would generate the same bytecodes or instruction set for it as it would have for equivalent code without using these features. So it should be possible to use a class created by java5 compiler in 1.4. But don't we get UnsupportedClassVersionError when we try to do that?

Here is the catch. Due to some reasons they had to change the class version and that is why this UnsupportedClassVersionError. However these guys added a flag to java compiler (which ofcourse is undocumented) that can allow this. You need to invoke javac with "-source 1.5 -target jsr14" option and this will generate 1.4 compatible bytecodes for java5 syntax. This means I can happily write my code using generics, autoboxing, for..each loop, compile it with java5 compiler with this flag and be assured that this can run on 1.4 VM also.

That leaves one more set of features i.e; new concurreny, which I really really like in java5 and want to use. Thankfully some guys at Distibuted Computing Lab at Emory University have backported java5 concurrency (java.uti.concurrent) features that can be used in java 1.3+. I have infact used it and it is awesome !

So most of the juicy stuffs that were added in java5 can run on 1.4. Off to checking it out little more. :)

java.net article on ColdFusion and JavaEE

I found this interesting article by Kola Oyedeji on java.net. He talks about integration between ColdFusion and JavaEE and how this could be of interest to JSP developers.
We in our team here have discussed it so many times that why can not ColdFusion be used by J2EE/JSP developers or enterprises that standardize on J2EE. ColdFusion is a pure J2EE solution, runs on all the major applications servers, is so feature rich, so productive that it should be a no brainer for everyone to adapt this. And to this when I add the features that we are adding in Scorpio, it makes even more sense. I don't think there is any other platform which can come even close to CF in terms of features and productivity.
At MAX, I had a conversation with one of our customers and he said something very interesting. His client wanted a pure J2EE solution and his competitors were asking for nearly 6 months to implement this. So this guy did everything in CF, bundled it as an ear (that can be deployed on application server) and shipped in flat one month !! And his client never ever thought that this was a CF application. :D

Good to see this kind of article on a java website.