Considering that there are embedded platforms which only support JDK 1.3 still, arguing about dropping 1.4 support seems a bit optimistic.

UCSD Pascal's concept of write once run anywhere interpreted Pcode sounds a lot (to me) like the Java concept of write once debug everywhere Java bytecode.

But then I'm a dinosaur.

There's not much worth doing that can't be done in PDP11 Fortran IV. The overlays can get a bit tricky sometimes, given that there's only 64kB to play with, but...

Taking that there are loads of app servers running J2EE 1.4, I doubt it to be a good idea dropping 1.4 at all.

Java 5 dropping Entity Beans was reason enough *not* to embrace the Java EE 5 thingy. It isn't nice to set up a standard, and then changing everything in the next release, leaving those who actually adopted it in the cold.

Kind of like those SOAP rpc/encoded webservices...

Well, at least I got the dependency of 'get time and date' on AWT removed from 1.4 ...

There is no good reason to support ancient Java versions in a new Eclipse version - those who need support for an old version can obviously run an old version of Eclipse. It is not like those poor sods who use Visual Studio and discover that it is impossible to buy the old version they have to use for their legacy code.

We develop an API and still have a number of clients still running Java 1.3 - and last month got an email from a corporate client who was still running 1.2! This is J2SE as well.

Write once, run anywhen ?