5 ms·

James Gosling leaves Oracle

146 points by past 16y ago

prog 16y ago
Can anyone involved in or close to the Java/OpenJDK comment on what this might mean for Java/JDK/JVM?
- axod 16y ago
  Unless they log into all machines running java and break them, why does it particularly matter? What's the worry here?
  - prog 16y ago
    I am just wondering how involved Gosling is in JDK (in terms of roadmap, new features and such) now a days ... or is it primarily driven by the community?
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I don't think he has a close BDFL-style involvement with the Java SDK or standard library. From what I can observe, Java is, and has been, committee-driven since about 2000. And Gosling is too expensive to write code. His time is much better used in conferences, motivating developers.
      - pavs 16y ago
        I find it funny how you can be too expensive to code. I wonder when was the last time billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Sergey Brin coded for a large project just for the love of coding.
        jlmendez 16y ago
        Has Steve Jobs ever coded?, I know Gates and Brin did at some point. A quick search revealed a quote from Wozniak: "Steve jobs never programmed in his life." http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars
        pavs 16y ago
        Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the info. According to Wikipedia, he worked at Atari creating circuit board for games.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Legend says he sub-hired Woz for a fraction of what he was being paid. At that time, games were "programmed" with hardware too, so, it would no qualify as a programming job.
        blasdel 16y ago
        He used to do all the coding demos at NeXT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A (his little database app starts at 23:10)
    - past 16y ago
      I don't remember having seen his name for a long time in any technical discussion or decision involving Java, besides Closures, where he co-authored the BGGA proposal. Although it appears that Gafter and Bracha put more work in that one. Even then he did not apparently have enough say on the matter to make his blessed proposal official. His main role seems to be an evangelist for the platform and perhaps researcher for some more involved areas, like real-time systems and numerical processing, AFAICT from his blog posts.
- strlen 16y ago
  Gosling himself strongly objected ("No fucking way") to being called "the father of Java".
jacktang 16y ago
Will Gosling join in IBM?
- bitdiddle 16y ago
  that's a thought, he'd fit in very well at T.J. Watson
- zandorg 16y ago
  Google seems the best fit with people like Vint Cerf there.
- akadien 16y ago
  It seems logical he will end up at Google working on Android.
bitdiddle 16y ago
No surprise here. It's too bad the IBM/Sun talks broke down, I think it would have been a much better marriage.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  That would mean the death of SPARC. How could this be good? Well... It's better than Microsoft, I guess. The thought of a "Windows 7 Server for SPARC Enterprise Edition Plus" is frightening.
  - johnohara 16y ago
    Glad HN is not slashdot. Please elaborate why selling more SPARC servers would not have been a good thing for the many SUN employees affected by the merger.
    - gvb 16y ago
      The OP hypothesized merger between IBM and Sun would have been better than Oracle/Sun. If IBM had bought Sun, they would probably have killed the SPARC because IBM has their own RISC CPU, the Power series. Brian Aker says "I'm sure everything else Sun owned looked nice and scrumptious, but Oracle bought Sun for the hardware." http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/a-mysql-update-from-brian-aker.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/a-mysql-update-from-brian-a... which means the SPARC survives. [edit: proper quote]
      - nailer 16y ago
        IBM maintain their mainframe business. While nobody's writing new applications for ZSeries, much like SPARC, there are some very profitable, untouched apps that run on Solaris 8/SPARC and they'll be around till the company gets the time and budget to port them.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Apart from seeing the beautiful elegant hardware running a second-rate port of a second-rate OS and the patents Sun owns ending up on being auctioned to patent trolls so they could have a field day destroying every competition for Windows without implying Microsoft, nothing. Apart from that, it would be a good thing.
chmike 16y ago
Will Gosling work at Apple ? (just kidding)
gphil 16y ago
this doesn't bode well for (ex) sun products if oracle is imposing significant cultural changes on former sun employees.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Another elf leaves Middle Earth.
- sketerpot 16y ago
  He left Rivendell, sure, but maybe he's just moving to Lothlórien.
- paulbaumgart 16y ago
  In case that didn't make sense to you, it's a reference to: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
  - swombat 16y ago
    I think it's more likely to be a reference to Lord of the Rings. There's no need for the Steve Blank sub-reference for that statement to make sense.
strlen 16y ago
Where would somebody like Gosling go to find a home? In other words, what Sun-like industry Research and Development centers (not just research shops or application software vendors) remain? Microsoft the software company has a competing technology to sell you. Microsoft Research does not ship code. IBM and HP are professional services, not technology R&D companies. RedHat's JBoss division had been (very positively) driving the direction of Java EE, but they're much more of a consulting/software vendor (focused on enterprise software, not on programming languages) than an R&D shop. Google would be the most likely candidate: they use Java extensively, make their own JVM and contribute to Apache Harmony. They do highly advanced R&D work (you could say they're the modern day Bell Labs), but most fruits of it are internal (with some work ending up as research papers and a very tiny fraction going out as open source). Seems like something is missing: a first-class R&D shop that's a home to top technologists (who aren't interested wealth through entrepreneurship, but would rather work on many different, challenging projects -- something focused start-ups can't provide) and which ships software and hardware to the world. I'd love to see Google step up to that plate, but is that realistic?
- davi 16y ago
  you could say they're the modern day Bell Labs I think this comparison is unduly favorable to Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_devel...
  - strlen 16y ago
    Certainly agreed. I could say "a modern day runner-up to Bell Labs". Nonetheless they employ actual Bell labs people (Rob Pike, Kernighan, etc...).
    - hga 16y ago
      And Pike and Ken Thompson have gifted us with Go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29).
mkramlich 16y ago
to Mr. Gosling: thank you for your work on Java! I hope you take much deserved time off then maybe end up at one of the newer brain trusts like Google.
- benatkin 16y ago
  Well said, mkramlich!
grrrr 16y ago
On the topic of Java, anyone know what's happening with the Java app store? No doubt it will fail to reach critical mass with the public, but it's a shame. Had Java had a more presentable front end and Sun been more commercial they could have started the trend for apps many years back.

146 points by past 16y ago

prog 16y ago

Can anyone involved in or close to the Java/OpenJDK comment on what this might mean for Java/JDK/JVM?

axod 16y ago
Unless they log into all machines running java and break them, why does it particularly matter? What's the worry here?
- prog 16y ago
  I am just wondering how involved Gosling is in JDK (in terms of roadmap, new features and such) now a days ... or is it primarily driven by the community?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I don't think he has a close BDFL-style involvement with the Java SDK or standard library. From what I can observe, Java is, and has been, committee-driven since about 2000. And Gosling is too expensive to write code. His time is much better used in conferences, motivating developers.
    - pavs 16y ago
      I find it funny how you can be too expensive to code. I wonder when was the last time billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Sergey Brin coded for a large project just for the love of coding.
      - jlmendez 16y ago
        Has Steve Jobs ever coded?, I know Gates and Brin did at some point. A quick search revealed a quote from Wozniak: "Steve jobs never programmed in his life." http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars
        pavs 16y ago
        Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the info. According to Wikipedia, he worked at Atari creating circuit board for games.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Legend says he sub-hired Woz for a fraction of what he was being paid. At that time, games were "programmed" with hardware too, so, it would no qualify as a programming job.
        blasdel 16y ago
        He used to do all the coding demos at NeXT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A (his little database app starts at 23:10)
  - past 16y ago
    I don't remember having seen his name for a long time in any technical discussion or decision involving Java, besides Closures, where he co-authored the BGGA proposal. Although it appears that Gafter and Bracha put more work in that one. Even then he did not apparently have enough say on the matter to make his blessed proposal official. His main role seems to be an evangelist for the platform and perhaps researcher for some more involved areas, like real-time systems and numerical processing, AFAICT from his blog posts.
strlen 16y ago
Gosling himself strongly objected ("No fucking way") to being called "the father of Java".

jacktang 16y ago

Will Gosling join in IBM?

bitdiddle 16y ago
that's a thought, he'd fit in very well at T.J. Watson
zandorg 16y ago
Google seems the best fit with people like Vint Cerf there.
akadien 16y ago
It seems logical he will end up at Google working on Android.

bitdiddle 16y ago

No surprise here. It's too bad the IBM/Sun talks broke down, I think it would have been a much better marriage.

rbanffy 16y ago
That would mean the death of SPARC. How could this be good? Well... It's better than Microsoft, I guess. The thought of a "Windows 7 Server for SPARC Enterprise Edition Plus" is frightening.
- johnohara 16y ago
  Glad HN is not slashdot. Please elaborate why selling more SPARC servers would not have been a good thing for the many SUN employees affected by the merger.
  - gvb 16y ago
    The OP hypothesized merger between IBM and Sun would have been better than Oracle/Sun. If IBM had bought Sun, they would probably have killed the SPARC because IBM has their own RISC CPU, the Power series. Brian Aker says "I'm sure everything else Sun owned looked nice and scrumptious, but Oracle bought Sun for the hardware." http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/a-mysql-update-from-brian-aker.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/a-mysql-update-from-brian-a... which means the SPARC survives. [edit: proper quote]
    - nailer 16y ago
      IBM maintain their mainframe business. While nobody's writing new applications for ZSeries, much like SPARC, there are some very profitable, untouched apps that run on Solaris 8/SPARC and they'll be around till the company gets the time and budget to port them.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Apart from seeing the beautiful elegant hardware running a second-rate port of a second-rate OS and the patents Sun owns ending up on being auctioned to patent trolls so they could have a field day destroying every competition for Windows without implying Microsoft, nothing. Apart from that, it would be a good thing.

chmike 16y ago

Will Gosling work at Apple ? (just kidding)

gphil 16y ago

this doesn't bode well for (ex) sun products if oracle is imposing significant cultural changes on former sun employees.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

Another elf leaves Middle Earth.

sketerpot 16y ago
He left Rivendell, sure, but maybe he's just moving to Lothlórien.
paulbaumgart 16y ago
In case that didn't make sense to you, it's a reference to: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
- swombat 16y ago
  I think it's more likely to be a reference to Lord of the Rings. There's no need for the Steve Blank sub-reference for that statement to make sense.

strlen 16y ago

Where would somebody like Gosling go to find a home? In other words, what Sun-like industry Research and Development centers (not just research shops or application software vendors) remain? Microsoft the software company has a competing technology to sell you. Microsoft Research does not ship code. IBM and HP are professional services, not technology R&D companies. RedHat's JBoss division had been (very positively) driving the direction of Java EE, but they're much more of a consulting/software vendor (focused on enterprise software, not on programming languages) than an R&D shop. Google would be the most likely candidate: they use Java extensively, make their own JVM and contribute to Apache Harmony. They do highly advanced R&D work (you could say they're the modern day Bell Labs), but most fruits of it are internal (with some work ending up as research papers and a very tiny fraction going out as open source). Seems like something is missing: a first-class R&D shop that's a home to top technologists (who aren't interested wealth through entrepreneurship, but would rather work on many different, challenging projects -- something focused start-ups can't provide) and which ships software and hardware to the world. I'd love to see Google step up to that plate, but is that realistic?

davi 16y ago
you could say they're the modern day Bell Labs I think this comparison is unduly favorable to Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_devel...
- strlen 16y ago
  Certainly agreed. I could say "a modern day runner-up to Bell Labs". Nonetheless they employ actual Bell labs people (Rob Pike, Kernighan, etc...).
  - hga 16y ago
    And Pike and Ken Thompson have gifted us with Go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29).

mkramlich 16y ago

to Mr. Gosling: thank you for your work on Java! I hope you take much deserved time off then maybe end up at one of the newer brain trusts like Google.

benatkin 16y ago
Well said, mkramlich!

grrrr 16y ago

On the topic of Java, anyone know what's happening with the Java app store? No doubt it will fail to reach critical mass with the public, but it's a shame. Had Java had a more presentable front end and Sun been more commercial they could have started the trend for apps many years back.