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James Gosling joining Google

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Re: James Gosling joining Google

#81
post #72
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nit: Halfway to somewhere, but that somewhere ain't Lisp.

I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#82
post #52

Earlier 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…

Thought I should point out MS also has quite a concentration of languages folks that were famous before joining MS:

Butler Lampson, Erik Meijer, Herb Sutter, Burton Smith, Anders Hejlsberg

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#83
post #81
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nit: Halfway to somewhere , but that somewhere ain't Lisp. I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.

Cobol? :-P

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#85
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What surprised me was how IBM decided to get close to Oracle instead of fight for improved position in the F500 using Java as lever.

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#86
post #83
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: Halfway to somewhere , but that somewhere ain't Lisp. I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.

Cobol? :-P

Smalltalk would be a good non-snarky answer and one with some basis in history, although Smalltalk seems to have been a much stronger influence over the JVM than the Java language.

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#87
post #77
post #19

For 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.

Also, he wrote the first version of Emacs for Unix (which was later forked by Richard Stallman to become GNU Emacs)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#88
post #82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thought I should point out MS also has quite a concentration of languages folks that were famous before joining MS: Butler Lampson, Erik Meijer, Herb Sutter, Burton Smith, Anders Hejlsberg

+1 for Anders Hejlsberg. He created Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C# - that's 3 very successful languages/development platforms.

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#89
post #81
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nit: Halfway to somewhere , but that somewhere ain't Lisp. I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.

FWIW, none other than Guy Steele has cited Java as dragging C++ programmers halfway to Lisp: http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...

Re: James Gosling joining Google

#90
post #89
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: Halfway to somewhere , but that somewhere ain't Lisp. I'm under-rested and under-caffeinated, but the only thing I can think of that I'd call an intentional similarity between the two languages is the fact they're both garbage collected.

FWIW, none other than Guy Steele has cited Java as dragging C++ programmers halfway to Lisp: http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...

I'd agree with him, given that this statement was about programmers and Java really did open the floodgates for a diversity of programming languages to become accepted, or at least tolerated.

The Java language itself, however, is not very close to Lisp at all.

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