Maximum PC

I've been updating some of my bookmarks and finally starting to setup an RSS reader/feeds. [insert CrashTech joke here -- "Gadget waited until RSS was over 10 years old until..."].

Anyways, I used to read James Gosling's blog pretty regularly a few years back. Today, I noticed that he has "resigned" from Oracle/SUN. The entry simply states that "Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good". It makes you wonder what is going on with the new company. If you ran a software company, what would you do to keep someone with JAG's credentials on board? Apparently, he is planning on taking a break before hunting for a new job.

Should we start a pool to see where he ends up? =)

Srsly dude, I am on RSS 2.0

Also, it doesn't mean that SUN/Oracle is doing anything bad. It could be any of several things, especially when you get people that smart in a room together. Bad things happen.

He was probably just being classy by saying something without saying anything.

Wow! Maybe M$ will scoop him up, have him work on .NET. Maybe Google? Maybe he could go work for Apple and clean up Objective-C a bit.

Either way, that's a HUGE loss for Oracle. We'll see what happens to Java at this point.

In a previous post, JAG made a comment about Oracle making drastic cuts in salaries. I made not sure if Sun paid well or Oracle is just cheap though (or both). Apparently, quite a few of Sun's engineers have elected to work elsewhere, and he feels that quite a few might even create companies of their own. Could be interesting...


1) I doubt that he will end up at MS given his involvement in the Java .NET case/war, but you never know. It is a slim chance, but he might show up at MS research.
2) I could definitely see him working for Google. A few prominent Java guys are already there, and given the number of people who worked at Sun then headed over to Google, he has probably worked with quite a few of their top guys.
3) Apple could be a really interesting option. I thought Gosling working at Apple for a split second previously (then chuckled and said "nah"). I have the strong impression that Gosling is nuts and bolts compsci guy. For example, he consideres the JVM, not the Java language, to be the important feature of Java. What if Apple created an Objective-C virtual machine to hook more people on their apps?

[note: I'm assuming that an Obj-C VM doesn't already exist... I know GCC supports Obj-C, but I'm not sure to what extent.]

If Apple placed Objective-C and their tools (which I understand are incredibly good) in a position to compete with Java, .NET and C++, they could win over A LOT of developers and move even more people over to their platform. There are a lot of possibilities to consider...

I would love to see Objective-C take over C++. =)


For the next few years, Java will be fine. There is still a huge demand for the language and the Java Community Process should keep things together. Long term, it will be interesting to see how Oracle decides to support Java. For example, are they going to develop and improve the virtual machine on all the platforms that Sun currently supports? I could see Oracle/Sun stopping support for Mac and Linux which would leave the whole platform in basically the same position that .NET currently is in terms of cross-platform desktop support.

I am actually a little concerned about things like Open Office, MySQL, and Java now that Oracle has it's fingers in the pie.

Oracle now charges $90 per user, sold in bundles of 100, for the ODF plugin for use with Microsoft Office. Hmmm? I don't want to go all tinfoil-hat just yet, however, this warrants a close eye.

I can understand why the JVM, not the language, is more important. .NET is treated much the same way. The engineers put much of their time and effort into the framework - the DLR, LINQ...the language is built around the framework. Now, for Gosling to go Apple would indeed be interesting. Objective-C really doesn't have a VM per se, if so, it's pretty rudimentary. Think of Obj-C as a thinly veiled wrap around C. It would, however, benefit from a VM considering how Java is integrated into the OS X kernel. they could stand to replace that with an Obj-C runtime that utilizes a true managed environment.





Regardless, right now, Java's future is on shaky grounds. Considering that the number of people that aren't exactly fans of Oracle. They've already taken over Open Office and MySQL. It'll be intersting indeed, we'll see.

Hopefully if it starts getting too bleak someone will fork the project(s). That was actually the best thing to ever happen to X11. MySQL might have a dim future since there are viable alternatives, but I can't see RedHat, Novell and company standing by while ooo and java get run into the ground.

Java should be fine. People aren't going to stop using it just because Oracle has a bad reputation. About the worse thing Oracle could do to Java would be to stop developing JVMs or charging for them, and while quite a few of you might not remember it, there was a time when the best JVMs weren't exclusively made by Sun. This might cause a short-term bump, but the language will survive. Cobol and Fortran are still around after all.

MySQL, Derby and Posgres could be in trouble. Personally, I never liked the MySQL filesystem (that pretends to be a database) very much. If Sybase was smart, they'd be making a big stink right now. There database is much better than MySQL... I'd hate to see Posgres go away.

I don't really have much use for MS Office or OO.