Back to Square One

Last 2 weeks were a little hard on me (today being the hardest, will tell you why after some time). We have an issue with our application GUI hanging every now and then in the productoin environment, and am the 'bakra' this time, having been assigned to debug the code and rectify the error.

Since this code was recently ported to a Solaris box, I had to start from scrap. I got the path where Java is installed on the box from my System Admin, and started off. Sigh! What a difficult job it was, and too very demanding!!! Every time, I issued a command to compile, the compiler shouted at me, using all words it knows like symbol table, Software Configuration Management etc which made me think it would have been better if it just tells me, "Idiot, don't you even know to set the environment properly beffore trying to compile with a makefile??". But no, it just doesn't say things all that clear and I had to google, make changes one by one,compile again, and ho! listen to all those perfectly 'sensible' messages from my dear compiler. But then, being the hard nut that I am, I fought and fought with every single thing in Solaris, and atlast, successfully made a Makefile, which gave me the class files for my code.

Boy, wasn't I happy? And today, as soon as this conquer of the Mt Everest happened (or so I felt), I made the jars and got all ready for deployment and my testing. I typed in my URL, and was waiting, for my page with all my applets to appear. All I got was a blank screen, but thank goodness, I had the sense to look into the Java console, and it said "java.lang.ClassFormatError: Bad major verision number". I googled for the same and know what? It gave me a pretty straightforward answer. My GUI which runs in Netscape 4.79 under SunOS 5.8 can't work with code compiled with Jave 1.4, using which I had compiled the whole damned thing!! Well.. all I have to do now is to get the path for Java Version 3 or earlier from my SA and start again , you know, such an easy job, considering that my compiler is so very considerate and compassionate!!!

Don't I just love my job, and yeah, my System Admin ???