4 ms·

James Gosling (Creator of Java): I've retired

27 points by langitbiru 2y ago

toomuchtodo 2y ago
"I've finally retired. After a crazy number of years as a software engineer, it's time for me to just have fun. The last 7 years at Amazon have been great, despite COVID-19 and industrial craziness. I've got a long list of side projects to plough through. It'll be fun." https://archive.today/jKr03 https://archive.today/jKr03 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling
- riku_iki 2y ago
  > I've got a long list of side projects to plough through. It'll be fun." Hacker's retirement.
galkk 2y ago
I hate to be that guy, but out of all language authors I think that Gosling is the least remarkable. First versions of Java as a language really feel as a language, designed by a student with pretty maximalist opinions. No goto, no autoboxing, resistance to generics… Even at a time it was created, it was nothing new.
- notarobot123 2y ago
  There are very few languages that have been nearly as successful. Adoption and deployment at that scale is pretty remarkable whatever you think of the design decisions.
  - galkk 2y ago
    I think its because of JVM hype (write once, run everywhere) and JDK depth, not because of Java as a language itself.
- _mlbt 2y ago
  To be honest, that was its strength. It was brilliant largely for what it left out. I think it was largely successful as a language that superficially looked like C++ but without the sharp edges and foot guns. Also, it largely succeeded at being easy to learn, portable, memory safe, and reasonably secure. Once the HotSpot JIT was added, performance was actually quite good as well. The biggest issue Java had was that it never had a GUI toolkit that was pleasant for both developers and end users.
  - rlawson 2y ago
    Yep - I switched from C/C++ to Java around 99 and compared to the pain of C++ it was an easy decision. There is a ton of business logic and line of business apps that Java was the default choice for a lot of years. If Swing had a more pleasant devx/deployment then we would be using Swing apps instead of electron.
    - _mlbt 2y ago
      Swing apps were also terrible for end users. The default “Metal” look and feel was just not very good, and the platform emulating ones were just uncanny valley. They never quite looked or felt right for the platform.

27 points by langitbiru 2y ago

"I've finally retired. After a crazy number of years as a software engineer, it's time for me to just have fun. The last 7 years at Amazon have been great, despite COVID-19 and industrial craziness. I've got a long list of side projects to plough through. It'll be fun." https://archive.today/jKr03 https://archive.today/jKr03 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling

riku_iki 2y ago
> I've got a long list of side projects to plough through. It'll be fun." Hacker's retirement.

galkk 2y ago

I hate to be that guy, but out of all language authors I think that Gosling is the least remarkable. First versions of Java as a language really feel as a language, designed by a student with pretty maximalist opinions. No goto, no autoboxing, resistance to generics… Even at a time it was created, it was nothing new.

notarobot123 2y ago
There are very few languages that have been nearly as successful. Adoption and deployment at that scale is pretty remarkable whatever you think of the design decisions.
- galkk 2y ago
  I think its because of JVM hype (write once, run everywhere) and JDK depth, not because of Java as a language itself.
_mlbt 2y ago
To be honest, that was its strength. It was brilliant largely for what it left out. I think it was largely successful as a language that superficially looked like C++ but without the sharp edges and foot guns. Also, it largely succeeded at being easy to learn, portable, memory safe, and reasonably secure. Once the HotSpot JIT was added, performance was actually quite good as well. The biggest issue Java had was that it never had a GUI toolkit that was pleasant for both developers and end users.
- rlawson 2y ago
  Yep - I switched from C/C++ to Java around 99 and compared to the pain of C++ it was an easy decision. There is a ton of business logic and line of business apps that Java was the default choice for a lot of years. If Swing had a more pleasant devx/deployment then we would be using Swing apps instead of electron.
  - _mlbt 2y ago
    Swing apps were also terrible for end users. The default “Metal” look and feel was just not very good, and the platform emulating ones were just uncanny valley. They never quite looked or felt right for the platform.