Father of Java, James Gosling Unloads 337
javab0y writes "The folks over at basementcoders did a podcast with James Gosling, The Father of Java, last week at a coffee shop in San Francisco during the JavaOne conference. In a raw and no-holds-barred interview, James let loose on Oracle, the Google Lawsuit, and his experience with IBM. You know its going to be good when he starts out saying, 'I eventually graduated in '83. Went to work for IBM which is, you know, is within the top 10 of my stupidest career decisions I've made.' The podcast was fully transcribed."
A Few Typos, But The Heart and Core Is There... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"There's a few typos in there that we'll fix soon enough, but putting that aside, you really get to the heart of what's driving Gosling and what he hopes for the future of Java."
I didn't get any of that.
All I got is:
a) the future of Java is controlled by Wicked Larry Ellison.
b) Jim Gosling wishes the future of Java were not controlled by Wicked Larry Ellison, but it is.
Can anybody answer: What is driving Gosling? And what is the future of Java?
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Don't use garage band to record long interviews. It's not intended for that purpose. Use Audacity [sourceforge.net]. Since you didn't even give the details of the resolution you were recording at, I'm not going to mention how that was probably the culprit in your garage band crashes. But when you use Audacity, be sure to set the recording to a low bitrate for an hou
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it's a process. First your mics may be out of phase depending on how close they were when you recorded. align the wave forms then try reversing the phase (polarity) of one wave form to hear if it reinforces Mr.G's voice. Focus on the one that picks up a "hotter" signal and is clearer, then use equalisation to reduce the back ground noise and improve Mr.G (think 'I'm taking noise away'). repeat on the second channel. pan one left and the other rig
Java is crap (Score:2, Funny)
I hope he makes a new language called "Foam"... you know, what goes on top of a good cup of coffee?
Oh really? (Score:2, Funny)
So, that particular case is one I've been drawn into over and over again for years. If we could do benchmarks on sine and cosign on intel chips compared to C. We beat C on just about everything except benchmarks on Sine and cosign. It turns out there's a small issue with the way the sine and cosign hardware is implemented in the spec on the intel platform. And we actually work around it in software. For the ranges from plus or minus five, we are close to intel speeds. You get the larger values, where the intel thing rips. So lots of folks who use math on the Java platform because we do it accurately. We put a lot of effort into it.
The thing that I'm not sure about, the part about "benchmarks" - is he also referring to performance, as in, speed?
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Funny)
Of course he does. Java can do sine and cosine in 12 parsecs!
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Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Funny)
you went off on a tangent
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you went off on a tangent
I see; can't have people making puns.
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right, try and gall
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Yeah, Sun bought Dakota Scientific Software back in the 90's to get their high speed math libraries. They take number crunching pretty seriously there.
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It's actually called 'crema': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crema_%28coffee%29#crema [wikipedia.org]
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And amazingly, no one has thought of calling a programming language Crema yet.
It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Insightful)
I have plenty of respect for the guy's technical prowess. He was definitely also in the right place at the right time but also undoubtedly technically brilliant. And yet he runs his career like a schoolboy. You just don't go around openly rubbishing former employers like that as it makes prospective employers wary. After all you'll probably rubbish them when you're done too. I wonder how many opportunities he's missed acting that way.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amen.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm more amused at how people react with horror at someone actually being open and honest.
There's honesty and there's honesty. For example if your spouse puts on weight and asks you if she has you might be able to honestly answer "Yeah you've turned into a real pig honey. Lay off the chocolate and get off your arse" or "Yes, you've put on a little weight, but it's nothing you can't fix, and I still adore you". Which one do you think is better for your relationship?
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Yeah, it's like the time my GF asked if her dress made her look fat. I gave an honest answer, "No dear, it doesn't". I saw no point in saying that the dress had nothing to do with it.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Insightful)
You just don't go around openly rubbishing former employers like that as it makes prospective employers wary. After all you'll probably rubbish them when you're done too. I wonder how many opportunities he's missed acting that way.
I'd like to think there are employers who are more concerned with "What can he do for us?" rather than "OMG, what will he say about US in a few years?!? He might hurt our feeeeeellliiiinnngs!!!" Employers who fret about things like that are employers I don't really want to work for.
I don't work on computers, but I find it hard to believe that in his field, you could be brilliant and find yourself unemployable because you said working for X company was a mistake.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet he missed none he wanted. He is at a point where he does not need to worry about that.
I find it really sad that you are saying this, true but sad that speaking the truth is so startling. One reason why I refuse to work at any big company.
Here's why they will. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. This isn't your typical dime a dozen BSCS or BSEE cubical wage slave that be easily replaced.
3. Unlike the folks in #2, he can say, "I created billions of dollars worth of revenue for x,y,z"
Of course he'll get hired - even by big unimaginative corporations who like their cookie-cutter employees.
Re:Here's why they will. (Score:5, Funny)
2. This isn't your typical dime a dozen BSCS or BSEE cubical wage slave that be easily replaced.
*sniff* At least my children love me...
Re:Here's why they will. (Score:5, Funny)
*sniff**2 I don't have children, you insensitive clod!
Re:Here's why they will. (Score:5, Funny)
2. This isn't your typical dime a dozen BSCS or BSEE cubical wage slave that be easily replaced.
*sniff* At least my children love me...
Shut up Dad and make me a sandwich. Jesus, what a tedious old fuck...
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If nothing else he will get hired by CMU or some other major university. Just to have him. Maybe Google even if he did say they are a little creepy.
...Assuming he *wants* to get hired. (Score:2)
He could just decide to retire. It would be a natural decision after being thus rudely slammed into the ugly, rapacious side of the industry - painful and disillusioning after working in the engineering-focused environment that Sun had been since 1984.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Funny)
Or you get picked up by companies whose CEOs also think Larry Ellison is a dick.
Meaning Gosling just reduced his range employment choices by 1.
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:4, Funny)
Or you get picked up by companies whose CEOs also think Larry Ellison is a dick
For example Microsoft - oh, wait...
Right about now (Score:2)
There's not a lot of positive sentiment about Lunatic Larry at GOOGLE. Just sayin'
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.
Some xkcd's become clichés for a reason. This is one of them. xkcd 137 [xkcd.com].
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I see your xkcd and raise you TWO demotivators: Dreams [despair.com] and Get To Work [despair.com].
Re:It's amazing anyone employs him (Score:4, Insightful)
Pah. I raise you ONE Edgar Allan Poe (worth at least FOUR demotivators): "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
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No I don't. You could apply this logic to everything that was ever written, claiming that every single thought has been uttered before (making your statement a cliché as well). Where's the fun in that? And what does count as 'original'?
By the way, I'm a dipshit: xkcd is very funny.
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You do realize that xkcd just mentions well-established clichés, right? That's exactly what that "comic" does time and time again. There's absolutely nothing original about xkcd. It just presents some well-known idea, or in some cases even just references some meme, and for some reason a lot of dipshits at sites like Slashdot, Digg and reddit somehow think it's "funny".
You know what? Your post isn't working for me. Perhaps if I push the bar more frequently, the food pellets will come out more often.
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Sometimes it pays to have a reputation for telling it like it is. I have been training customers when I did that and my employer didn't like it but sometimes a relationship needs to be repaired and the only way is to open the books so to speak so I get to do that.
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I have plenty of respect for the guy's technical prowess. He was definitely also in the right place at the right time but also undoubtedly technically brilliant. And yet he runs his career like a schoolboy. You just don't go around openly rubbishing former employers like that as it makes prospective employers wary. After all you'll probably rubbish them when you're done too. I wonder how many opportunities he's missed acting that way.
Yeah, look what happened to Tony Li. Oh, wait...
Times have changed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Times have changed (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck reaching any IT big wig these days.
That depends.
Steve
Sent from my iToy
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When there is a problem, you have to fix it yourself because all the wigs are in meetings.
Re:Times have changed (Score:5, Funny)
I googled his name on altavista.com...
That's priceless.
Re:Times have changed (Score:5, Funny)
I hear nowadays you can google stuff on bing!
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You should have been using "webcrawler" instead.
Re:Times have changed (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh, it's still quite possible to get an answer from a real bigwig. But the response may not be what you were looking for. Just ask Chelsea Kate Isaacs.
Interesting interview, shoddy proofreading (Score:3, Interesting)
I went in expecting Gosling to have formulated this whole platform full of talking points why Oracle should do this, that, and the other, but instead I got a pretty cogent assessment which jibes with just about everything I suspected as an outsider. Oracle exists to make money and is very aggressive in its tactics: true. Android violates Sun patents: true. He even goes so far to say he would have no problem with Oracle maintaining stewardship of Java if it does right by the community (though he's a little unclear what he's referring to there).
The interviewers seem more eager to go with the whole "Oracle is the Devil" angle than Gosling. Gosling seems to more be saying Oracle has a tendency to be a bully, and who can argue with that?
On the other hand, I wish someone could have gone through the transcript and done a global search-and-replace for "intel" and "cosign," at least...
The Google lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually did not know, until today, that Microsoft was paying a Java patent license fee for .NET's design.
Just before he said the above, he said this, which is probably obvious to many people, but I found it poignant all the same:
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With Oracle it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to make money.
That quote describes most of their software!
Re:The Google lawsuit (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed that quote, too, but it goes deeper than it seems from the first glance. Just think about it: you may be sued by Oracle for violating JVM patents if you use Mono!
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Re:The Google lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
He's full of shit. Microsoft paid Sun because MS had their own Java implementation, not (from anywhere I can find) because Microsoft's CLR infringed any Java technology patents.
In 2004 Microsoft and Sun settled an anti-trust and patent suit: Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve antitrust issues and $900 million to resolve patent issues, the companies said. The companies will pay royalties to use each other's technology; Microsoft is paying $350 million now...
http://news.cnet.com/Sun-settles-with-Microsoft,-announces-layoffs/2100-1014_3-5183848.html
Re:The Google lawsuit (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/apr04/04-02sunagreementpr.mspx [microsoft.com]
I mean, yeah, what the fuck would James Gosling know, compared to you, eh?
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No! (Score:2, Informative)
You got your wires crossed. He's talking about MS licensing Java technology that they copied for .NET.
Nothing to do with MS's java implementation.
"Microsoft .NET just smears over a huge pile of Sun patents. When they did the .NET design, they basically cut and pasted from the Java spec. "
Re:The Google lawsuit (Score:4, Interesting)
@RightSaidFred99 I would take Gosling's word over you who did some Google searches .. these agreements aren't public and you won't just find them by typing in a search engine. So it really doesn't matter what you believe .. unless you were AT Sun or AT Microsoft when this went down .. your opinion means just a little less then gum on the bottom of a shoe.
Yes, they are (as so any litigation that might lead to these agreements.) These are publicly traded companies. It would be extremely, extremely rare that something of such magnitude would be hidden away from public eyes. In fact, anything hidden like that would typically be considered un-kosher and suspect of investigation.
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Publicly traded and un-kosher doesn't mean fuck-all when there's big money at stake and lawyers and accountants involved. Look at what has happened over the last 10 years. Weren't Enron, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, et al. publicly traded companies?
Good interview, deeper thoughts? (Score:2)
The interview was entertaining and somewhat insightful. I wish the interviewers would've asked more details about Gosling's current doings, what aspects of NoSQL he's working on, details about the languages, etc. Too much space was allocated to Oracle Venting. I wish the interviewers or Gosling would've devoted more time to more technical stuff and future directions.
**** out of 5 - great job, Basement Coders!
pr3d4t0r
Thanks God for transcriptions! (Score:5, Insightful)
I skimmed the whole thing, and read a few good chunks of it, in about 5 minutes. Much better than listening to a full hour-plus of audio. Thanks to whoever did that!
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I can't believe that's an hour of audio.
Re:Thanks God for transcriptions! (Score:5, Insightful)
amen! #1 reason I've never understood podcasts... Reading is sooo much faster and more convenient.
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amen! #1 reason I've never understood podcasts... Reading is sooo much faster and more convenient.
not when you are driving a vehicle during your daily commute. Everyone that I know listens to podcasts during
drive / commuting time.
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I agree, although they could have omitted all the "you know"'s and so on...
I look foward to listening to it in full! (Score:3, Interesting)
I browsed through the interview and hope I can listen to the podcast soon.
He says some neat things:
Some...well...things that I don't think I can get behind:
and some interesting:
I'm still not sure how to regard Oracle right now, but I'm comfortable with the idea that Java needs a permanent and legal separate existence from Oracle.
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Java needs a permanent and legal separate existence from Oracle.
Won't happen, for reasons Gosling pointed out: it's too big and too widely deployed to be maintained without huge test expense for even the smallest code changes.
Which is kind of interesting, because all along I've kind of had the supposition that one of the things Sun had done with Java is to streamline that so that the propagation of the effects of changes was no longer unpredictable. I guess they didn't. In fact it sounds like the opposit
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This is a stupid statement if I ever read one. No wonder he left Oracle.
as an ex-sun guy (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to laugh at his comments about oracle. and the oracle view of 'The Tee Shirt' (tm).
speaking of tee shirts, while at sun there was a 'java anniversary party' and mr java himself was there. some cute photos from the event, a few years back (when sun was still kind of fun to be at):
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/472512518_4f70840cd2_z.jpg [flickr.com]
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/19/121342959_449ed7dea0_z.jpg [flickr.com]
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/202/472513502_682f02afc2_z.jpg [flickr.com]
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/19/121338473_07823a9da0_z.jpg [flickr.com]
RIP sun. we all miss you.
and, duke, please turn out the lights when you leave, okay?
I owe this man alot (Score:5, Funny)
Without James I would only have to maintain half the servers I do today and would likely be out of a job.
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On the other hand, without him I wouldn't have to try to juggle the fun of "Application x runs only on Java version y, Application xx runs only on Java version z, and Java y and Java z don't get along too well."
I was angry about this as I started typing, but then I realized that maybe this keeps me employed as well. Damn. :(
Thank god he's gone from Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
He needs to focus less on freedom, and more on achieving some semblance of feature parity with .NET. Microsoft is so far ahead with C# and CLR it's not even funny anymore. Dear James, why the fuck can't I new up an array of fully specialized generic objects in Java in year 2010? I mean, this is just bizarre crap. And this guy just keeps going around and telling everyone how much of a genius he is.
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why the fuck can't I new up an array of fully specialized generic objects
I can't imagine wanting to do that. Arrays were invented because the infrastructure didn't exist for better data structures. Ever heard of Collections?
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In one line you've shown everything thats wrong with computing today.
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Are you kidding? Java was a big step backwards compared to the state of the art in the mid-90's. Java still hasn't caught up with languages like Smalltalk (Java's collections are a poor rip-off of Smalltalk's).
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The reason why Java5 generic collections are nowhere nearly as efficient as they could be (and as they are in .NET) is because they build on arrays, which cannot be new'd from generic types - so you have to use boxing for primitives.
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I am far from a Java fan boy but not oblivious to the fact that it is a much easier task to create a language and vm designed for a single platform.
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Can you point out what, exactly, in Java language and VM design, as compared to CLR/C#, is made more complicated by targeting different platforms?
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True. Perhaps one day Microsoft will do that. But he was talking about C# and .NET, which is designed to be cross-platform, and has 3rd-party implementations for every major OS out there. The specific feature that Melted was asking for is a basic language design feature, and has nothing to do with cross-platform.
really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Python, Perl, Tcl, Lua, and CLR all run on many platforms. Python with Gtk+ or Qt is a much better cross-platform environment than Java: easier to develop for, with better desktop integration, and nicer looking UIs.
I don't know of any mainstream language or VM other than the old VisualBasic that ran on a single platform. Gtk+, Qt, and wx all are cross-platform toolkits, better than anything Java has ever provided.
(Besides, Sun didn't even design or develop Swing, they bought it.)
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...fully specialized generic objects...
Maybe it's just me, but I have no idea what this means.
Re:Thank god he's gone from Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
How many platforms does
What approximate percentage of the development market (projects, jobsm tools, conferences, books, etc) does C# have relative to Java? [answer: approx 25% according to Tiobe.com; even PHP is a more popular development tool than C#]
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html [tiobe.com]
What development platform has had no epidemics of vulnerabilities when deployed to be the Internet? [Answer: Java; contrast the ASP.Net platform that is was discovered to be *very* badly remotely exploitable in the last few days so much that Microsoft had to issue an emergency out-of-band patch]
Which development platform is conservative adding features (not worrying about 'trendy' features that get deprecated on the next release) so that massive investments on code are not deprecated by the need of a vendor to sell you a new IDE version every two years? [Answer: Java, not
You can keep your shiny new features that affect 2% of your codebase and survive for two years before something replaces them. I'll stick to saving myself time, my customers money, all the while keeping their systems safe.
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.NET is just a complete ripoff of Java.
I see you've finally got rid of your old "Java is better than .NET sig", but still haven't refreshed your knowledge on the latter. A hint: it's been 9 years since .NET 1.0 was released. It could be reasonably called a "Java ripoff" back then, but things have changed a lot. For the last 5 years or so (basically from Java 5 on), what ripping off has been there, has been going in the other direction.
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"A Java ripoff now with enhancements"
Well, it's better than "A Smalltalk ripoff with deficiencies", which is what Java is. Oh, some people rather argue that it's "C++ ripoff with deficiencies", but that's even worse. ~
On a serious note, though, the entire history of computer science is "ripping off" someone, and even more so when it comes to languages. Ultimately it's all a rip off FORTRAN, Algol-60 and Lisp, since everyone else came after and mostly rehashed those same ideas, sometimes adding little bits in between.
If you want something more
Aren't all his career moves in top 10 worst? (Score:3, Insightful)
Go to school or not. Go to graduate school or not. Go to IBM or not. Go to Sun or not. Stay at Oracle or not.
It looks like he's had under 10 career moves total, so by definition aren't all of them in the top 10 worst? (And also all are in the top 10 best).
Jahva Javva? (Score:2)
Javva? (that's 2 "v"s, not a w) Is that how you pronounce Java in Canadia?
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how you pronounce Java in Canadia?
We just say Tim Horton.
What I want to know is... (Score:3, Funny)
Did he stop everyone from working while he cleaned out his desk?
The Eclipse explanation was the best part! (Score:4, Interesting)
"IBM's been kind of weird on the whole topic because on the one hand they do everything they can to try and screw Sun over, I mean they didn't name Eclipse casually"
Never crossed my mind but once pointed out it's obvious that an Eclipse is what can defeat the Sun!
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Sun did not die because they were bad at technology. They died 'cause they were lousy at business. Trying to buy stuff off them was plain hard, you had to wait for their sales guys - no online purchasing where I was (despite all their competitors doing it) which seems unbelievably retarded in this day and age. Their gear was awesome and priced competitively but waiting for humans was such a slow way of doing things they lost sales.
let me unload, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, since he's unloading, let me "unload" too.
Mr. Gosling, the only reason Java is any good at all is because large numbers of technically competent people (many of them at IBM) fixed up the bad design decisions you made and patched up your horrible implementation. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much one can fix if a language is as broken as Java 1.0 was.
You have some gall criticizing Dalvik, which runs efficiently, unbloated, and apparently quite securely on millions of phones. The sandbox on your Java design and implementation on the other hand was insecure and buggy both conceptually and in terms of implementation, as a never ending stream of published problems showed. Of course, since Java failed for applets, hardly anybody cares anymore; nowadays, Java's sandbox is just bloat for most users.
And all the while you were promoting Java as an "open" language, you knew that it was covered by Sun patents that made any independent implementation impossible, what a cynical and evil thing to do.
Fortunately, its awful UI libraries kept Java from achieving any significance on the desktop or web, and for most server side software, people have developed alternatives based on less bloated platforms that are easier to develop for.
And of course, it's Java that sucked up all the development resources at Sun without yielding much in terms of revenue; it's the reason Sun eventually went out of business. And mobile Java's poor performance, poor compatibility, and horrible user interface killed mobile applications development until Apple came out with iPhone. What is Java going to kill next?
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Ah, but if he had done that, he might have been so stuck in with managerial duties etc that Java might not have been born!
It's safe to assume (Score:2)
Dr Gosling won't be panhandling on the street any time soon just because he walked out on that bunch of lunatics. His tenure at Sun would have left him substantially well off.
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I think that would have to be "garbage collected."
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run method exits. object will be returned to the heap at some unspecified time.
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I thought he either defecated or ejaculated.
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Can language exist without thought?
Can thought exist without language?
Doesn't sound like something to be discussed whilst sober.
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Why does he consider it a mistake to work for IBM? Does it have something to do with the sales oriented culture at IBM? I would like some clarification, Thanks.
The only explanation is that even smart people aren't above rhetorical nonsense.