Gavin follows up to Sam:

>Sam writes:

> I would also be interested to hear from anyone who can comment on:
> a) the differences between Java 1.0 and 1.1

>1.1 adds significant new functionality and replaces much of the old API
>for doing GUI stuff with a better design.  All the old 1.0 code still
>runs fine of course.

Yes, and the 1.1 event model is far superior in producing readable and
more maintainable code than is the 1.0 event model. I would highly
recommend using it. One additional piece of the puzzle to investigate is
the Swing release (Java Foundation Classes) from Javasoft (currently in
Beta, but worth a serious look). Swing fixes a bunch of the problems in
the pure vanilla AWT and makes for much better looking GUIs.

>>    . Symantec's Visual Cafe (the current version)

>I've been using IBM's VisualAge for Java lately, so I don't have any
>personal experience with the 2.0+ versions of Visual Cafe.

We're using Visual Cafe 2.0 and have no complaints. I've not played
with VisualAge, so I can't make comparisons. Visual Cafe 2.0 does
have the ability to produce native Win32 objects.

>While you do end up with a "standalone" .EXE file, the definition of
>standalone in these cases may mean multiple megabytes of required
>companion .DLL files and .JAR files.

True, but then again, most Windows programs today also come with
multi-megabyte DLLs such as the Microsoft Foundation Classes, so this
isn't much different other than you might get more code sharing with the
MFC DLLs.