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by amne 777 days ago
I don't even know what Java 6 means. Last time I wrote something in Java it said Java 1.5

  compiled Java class data, version 49.0 (Java 1.5)
1 comments

They rebranded Java 1.x as Java SE x, then later just Java x.
No, it's way more confusing than that.

They started with Java 1.0 and 1.1 - then to "Java 2" at version 1.2, so you have Java 2 version 1.2 ... they then stuck with that through the version after 1.4 - but rather than 1.5, that was special as it was Java 2 version 5.0 ... thereafter they're just numbered with the plain number.

So that's where the 2 in J2ME comes from!
> thereafter they're just numbered with the plain number.

    $ java -version
    java version "1.8.0_391"
    Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_391-b13)
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.391-b13, mixed mode)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, that's the JRE software version - that's completely different from the language version.

For the JRE, I want to say that they stuck with the 1.version.minor numbering (although the last version with a minor other zero was I think the Very Popular And Probably Still In Prod 1.4.2), with updates suffixed with "u" + number through the Java 8 series, but then with 9 they switched to version.minor.update instead.

It's completely incomprehensible; not even Oracle can keep it straight.