Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are they big users of java?
[deleted]
Citation, for FB and Microsoft?
James Gosling joining Google
71–80 of 116 posts
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already have at least one world class language designer in Guido. They also have the Go language. Point being that if they wanted a competing language to Java, they probably already had the talent to get it done. (Or just, you know, use Mono/C#).
This is a very solid point. Having an internally developed language like Go (which is, according to Rob Pike, being used "for real stuff" inside of Google), the creator of Python (one of the most widely used languages in recent years) and the creator of Java (one of the most widely used languages for at least a decade now) under one roof has to be an embarrassment of riches for any group intending to innovate in the…
Nah, that's too many cooks. They all want different things.
Guido is interested primarily in usability, and Python is notoriously poor in performance.
Rob Pike writes systems languages.
With Java, Gosling has written a very enterprise-friendly language, that drags C++ halfway to Lisp.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#73This should be interesting for both James and Google. In the Chinese sense. More than a few of the original Java team ended up there. I suppose Google has probably 'reached out' (or is that 'reach around' :-) to avh as well. The parts that are really interesting is the confluence of language design. Where is Guy Steele these days? At Sun there was a constant tension between Ousterhout(TCL). Java, and Self (wnj). Even…
I'd be curious to hear about some of the Tcl vs Java stuff. I was very into Tcl for a while and hated to see it go south:
http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-...
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything, they'll try to continue with Java instead, I'd expect. They're a big user internally.
Gosling would provide the credibility necessary if Google wanted to usurp Oracle as the provider of an "official" version of Java and/or the JVM. Big Corps are terrified of Oracle. I worked for a Fortune 100 which was all about using Weblogic vs. open source offerings like JBoss. Then, after the Oracle acquisition, the directive was to "explore competing options". Oracle's history of shakedowns is so well established…
IBM was a competitor to Sun. An IBM acquisition of Sun definitely would have triggered the government to get involved and explore the anti-trust/monopoly angle.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#75I once saw Gosling in an airport terminal waiting for a flight. He was consuming a large hot dog. I considered approaching him but decided to respect his privacy. When he finished his hot dog, he threw the messy wrapper directly onto the carpet. It was not a missed shot at the trash can, it was just blithely dropped on the floor. That's when I realized his work on automatic garbage collection had gone too far. I can'…
Bjarne has a guy who holds the hot dog for him and throws it away at the appropriate time. Takes up an extra seat, though.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#76This should be interesting for both James and Google. In the Chinese sense. More than a few of the original Java team ended up there. I suppose Google has probably 'reached out' (or is that 'reach around' :-) to avh as well. The parts that are really interesting is the confluence of language design. Where is Guy Steele these days? At Sun there was a constant tension between Ousterhout(TCL). Java, and Self (wnj). Even…
I'd be curious to hear about some of the Tcl vs Java stuff. I was very into Tcl for a while and hated to see it go south: http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-...
Tcl was the 'language to beat' amongst the new language products. Self was the 'language like no other' (or a totally new way to express what you wanted to a computer). Java was the 'language that re-used code'. C++ was kind of a joke (remember this was the late 80's, early 90's) since it took a perfectly acceptable language, C, and made writing code harder, more error prone, and less likely to produce correct code (all true at the time).
Tcl was a language of rapid expression and Java was a language which was safer, in part, because it enforced a certain level of correctness (type safety, no pointer arithmetic, Etc.).
Tcl had a "huge" installed base of developers, Java had zero developers and hoped to have 10 or 20K eventually.
Bert Sutherland (the guy running Sun Labs and Ivan's brother) got everyone in a room and said "We're going to have a 'language' day, and each of you gets to present why you think your language should exist." the issue was of course that Sun had only so much budget and we had no business reason for developing any new languages.
Surprisingly to some, Tcl 'won' that evaluation. Self was going to continue because Bill could self fund it if he wanted to, and Tcl had the developer base and momentum. The decision was taken to scrap the remains of the Java team (called the Live Oak project at the time) at the end of the Fiscal Year (June 30th, 1995). We were all set to be 're-deployed' which was Sun code for 'find a new job inside of Sun or we'll lay you off.'
What happened next was unexpected. James Gosling, with Kim Polese's help, had convinced the lawyers to allow us to release the source code for 'free' (very un-Sun like) so that we could at least point at something we had done on our resumes. The requirement was that we have a trademarkable name for it (which I believe was, in part, to prevent Apple or Microsoft from re-publishing it as their own thing). We dropped Alpha 1.1 (we had secretly released Alpha 1.0 in February) on March 23rd. Kim sent out a press release to some folks. (not sure if she used PR Newswire or not) The Mercury News put it on the front page, they got a quote from Marc Andresson over at Netscape that it was cool. When I went to the WWW conference 2.0 (as in second conference :-) in Darmstadt Germany two weeks later, everyone wanted to talk about it. I manually downloaded and installed it on all the Sparcstation 20's that the sales office had brought to the conference and gave a quick set of talking points to the sales guys. When I got back there was a storm because folks like Ed Zander were demanding to know why they hadn't been briefed before we announced it, Phil Sampire(sp?) was complaining that people kept calling the sales office to get their sales droid to come out and talk about it and they had no marketing material and no prep. May press conference was already queued up as the SparcStation 20 / Firewall-One launch event, the SS20 got the boot and they replaced it with the Java 'launch'. I spent a crazy couple of weeks creating a completely Java home page for Sun (had I known it was a portent of all flash sites to come I might have shot myself right then and there :-)
Everyone 'forgot' about how they were going to flush the team and instead everyone came out of the woodwork to claim they had supported it all along, SunSoft, SunLabs, and Sun Interactive (which had the only financial success with it at the time, competing against the Time Warner VOD bids). An entirely new 'planet' was born, called JavaSoft and the rest is history.
What Java gave Sun at that point in time was a credible threat against Microsoft. The threat was that the new desktop was the browser, and the way you coded for the browser was Java. Tcl didn't play in that space, and to their credit I don't think the Tcl folks were willing to go there just to ride the buzz.
Java's wake grew to eclipse the other language efforts and Sun never looked back.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#77For those (like me) who don't know he's famous because he invented Java. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling
For those for whom this is not enough (or maybe even negative :-) ), there's NeWS.
Regardless of this you should also read his "Window System Design:If I had it to do over again in 2002" ( http://www.hack.org/mc/texts/gosling-wsd.pdf ), which is sort of predicting the X -> Wayland move and a good paper on software design.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be curious to hear about some of the Tcl vs Java stuff. I was very into Tcl for a while and hated to see it go south: http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-...
Tcl was the 'language to beat' amongst the new language products. Self was the 'language like no other' (or a totally new way to express what you wanted to a computer). Java was the 'language that re-used code'. C++ was kind of a joke (remember this was the late 80's, early 90's) since it took a perfectly acceptable language, C, and made writing code harder, more error prone, and less likely to produce correct code (…
Thanks for the great story!
> the way you coded for the browser was Java. Tcl didn't play in that space, and to their credit I don't think the Tcl folks were willing to go there just to ride the buzz.
Interestingly, these guys were 'Tcl guys': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q3/0566.ht...
Looks like Java was already on their radar though, like you say.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#79One year almost to the day since he quit Sun/Oracle (see http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/time_to_move_on ). That probably means he had a 1-year non-compete built into his employment agreement which he had to wait out (which makes me curious about what he could be working on at Google that could trigger that)
So he just didn't see any future at Oracle? :-)
He went to the Oracle and learned his future was Google.
Re: James Gosling joining Google
#80pretty shitty of google to just poach all of Sun Microsystem's talent; borrow Java for google vm; and let the rest go to the grubby hands of larry o.
congratulations on the new gig, James! Really love what you guys did with that JVM. Great Tech.