Java Creator James Gosling Hired At Google 229
jfruhlinger writes "Some months after leaving Oracle in a huff, father of Java James Gosling has joined Google. It's not clear what his job responsibilities will be there, but given some of his past statements about Google projects — that Android has no adult supervision, for instance — it will be interesting to see what develops."
Re:Java (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is a fine language that not only is widely used in a lot of different settings (like, er, Android), but which clearly inspired C#. Without Java C# wouldn't exist, nor would its runtime library so closely mimic Java's.
The other thing to be admired about Java is it brought us the JVM, which hosts fine languages such as Scala and Gosu. Because of the widespread support Java enjoys, the JVM implementations have explored groundbreaking improvements in garbage collection performance, multithreading, IPC techniques and so on.
C#, on the other hand, is directly tied to Windows and will thus continue its descent into irrelevance. Perhaps Mono will start to get traction at some point, but many are wary of possible patent issues.
Google v. Oracle - Solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Java (Score:5, Insightful)
And MS-PL is not compatible with the GPL. If Microsoft really wanted to join hands with the Open Source community they wouldn't have deliberately created a license that is incompatible with the way the vast, vast majority of Open Source projects are licensed. I ignore their words. When I listen to their actions, the message is that they want to make a token gesture of openness that has severely limited practical use while discouraging community forks, all of which serves to make it possible for them to regain complete control if they later change their mind.
It's amazing how effective token gestures like this are, how impressed by them people can be. Really it's business as usual: if you want to actually benefit from the source they have provided you either do it Microsoft's way or you don't get to do it at all. Source that an Open Source developer can't use in their existing GPL projects may as well be closed source. Nowhere in here do you find any sort of community spirit, a cherishing of "free as in speech", an appreciation of compatibility, or a willingness to deal with the many Open Source developers as equals. It's either the Microsoft Way or the highway and that's why .Net is something I can easily live without, however convenient it may be.
No, they usually wait until it becomes much more widespread and ubiquitous before they do that. They're too smart to stop playing nice this early on. A wolf in sheep's clothing doesn't reveal his fangs until he's well within the flock of sheep. They use underhanded techniques like this again and again because they work, because so many fools still don't see it coming after so many examples. Anyone who doesn't understand that this is the way Microsoft operates is either ignorant about their history and the way it repeats itself, a marketer/shill, or just plain naive.
Re:Google v. Oracle - Solved (Score:2, Insightful)
As a developer with experience in both C# and Java, C# is the spiritual sequel to J++. It was MS' answer to the then-war with Sun over Java on Windows, and a sad effort at that. A language tied directly to a single OS = BAD. As a Java coder, I can get a job developing on desktop PCs, Web applications, smartphones, Blu-Ray players and TVs, or Martian rovers.
C# is tied to one OS? Huh, I guess no one bothered to tell the guys that make Unity [unity3d.com] that, seeing how their product uses C# and is cross platform.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google v. Oracle - Solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Java (Score:4, Insightful)
If the GPL crowd wanted to join hands with the Open Source Community they would have made their license compatible with the Mit License
which is free as in free and does not try to shove it down our throats like the brain washed/dead cult called GPL.
This is a classic troll that gets rehashed from time to time. That's because those who are willing to value what the GPL does (i.e. the overwhelming majority of all Open Source developers and users) already do so. Those who do not like the GPL have a different set of needs and values and cannot be convinced unless those needs and values change. Of course you knew that, and were counting on the irreconcilability of the positions to troll the more reactive types.
I for one appreciate what the GPL does. Really the only people who would have a solid reason to dislike the GPL are those with a strong desire to use someone else's work without ever having to contribute anything in return. I don't have that desire and I reject the entitlement mentality that would cause it. Those developers who want you to be able to do that with their hard work can always use a BSD-style license. Those who don't want you to be able to do that never owed you anything in the first place and their wishes should be respected.
I do not believe it's a concidence that Open Source as a movement was never anything the average user might have heard of until the GPL. Yes, the BSD license and those like it have been around for much longer, but for a long time they were something with which only geeks would be familiar. Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the most famous and widely-used Open Source software, such as Firefox, Linux, etc. are all GPL licensed.
Re:Java (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, if you're interested in the origins and influence of C# ... you might want to check out it's (main) inventor : Anders Hejlsberg.
Interview on the origin of C# [artima.com] (the short version : Turbo Pascal => Borland Pascal => Delphi (Object pascal). If you've used these different languages, this is beyond obvious : C# is a more concise version of Delphi's Object Pascal)
Frankly, more people should try C#, it's a much more ... complete ... language than java when it comes to language features. It's got all the things java misses, from function references, delegates (which are basically function pointers to class member functions, dear God I can't tell you how much java needs these), full generics (as opposed to type-erasure generics), properties (full getter/setter functionality without the pain), a full VM ... This means that any java program is trivially translated to C#, and can easily be improved from there. The reverse ... oh dear God you don't want to try converting a non-trivial C# program to java.
But as libraries go, C# is a disaster ... Microsoft really should start over from scratch and build a big coherent library (imnsho).
And of course, the things they both do very, very, very well : tool support. While java's (whether you're using eclipse or netbeans or even intellij) is a bit clunky, it's at least there : refactorings, code completion, ... C# has this too, even better than eclipse in my opinion, both on linux and on windows. But, even if C# edges out Java in this regard, both are very usable (as opposed to, say, scala's tool support. Want to learn functional programming ? F# is seriously more usable just because the tools are better)
What's wrong with type-erasure generics ? This would seem an obvious feature for a map class, if an instance doesn't exist yet, create it using the default constructor :
class Map<K, T> {
public T get(K key) {
if (contains(key)) return _get(key) else return new T();
}
}
Can't do it in java ... at all ... never ... Ever wished it would just work like that ? I know I did on many occasions.
Of course one of the better features of java is it's simplicity. It's brain-dead simple, in a way that Visual Basic is, but cleaner. Idiots can easily learn java programming, and fully mastering the language doesn't take all that much more.
Personally I wish google would fork java. Build a JVM (or just a Java++ compiler), and add a lot of features. Decent generics. Function pointers (including, *please* delegates). Properties. Tuples. But keep it some sort of compromise. More extensive than java, not quite as ridiculously complex as scala. Please : no stomping functional bits through everyone's throat, just a real extension to java.