'At the end of the day, Microsoft has more money than God'

James Gosling

James Gosling is a revered figure in the Java developer community. After all, he invented the language. Java was part of a research initiative called The Green Project that he and other engineers from Sun Microsystems began in 1990.

By 1995 the language was ready to be launched. Today it is one programming language which has truly revolutionised the way the internet works and it started the open standards mantra.

Gosling was in Hyderabad recently to be part of an annual Java developer conference, his second visit to India after 19 years. He was taken aback by the kind of fan following that he had in the country.

Probably for the second time in his life (the first time was in London), he found a mad rush of people wanting to touch him, so much so that Sun Microsystems had to arrange for security to protect him from a frenzied mob of developers.

Gosling frankly admits that he gets this kind of reception purely because he may be responsible for a lot of people holding jobs today.

The man responsible for creating 10 million jobs and more around the world, took time off from the conference and spoke to Business Standard
Excerpts

We see this kind of excitement only when rock stars come visiting. Why do you think they react the way they do?

Yeah, probably more like a 'Geek rock star' and the kind of frenzy is probably because they think that because of me they hold a job. In the computer business, folks have been extraordinarily successful because of Java. Developers come to these kind of conferences driven by their thirst for knowledge, for success and to learn.

Have you been surprised by the success of Java?

No, from an engineering point of view. Basically, it was an exercise in science fiction. We spent a lot of hours thinking about the way the world would evolve and we predicted it right.

That seems to me more like Nostradamus ....

(Laughs) Nostradamus pulled thoughts out of the hat. We did it in a more scientific manner. We spoke to people who built locomotives, telecom guys, elevator manufacturers .. a whole lot of guys in the business other than the computer business, and asked them what they wanted.

Digital systems were just starting to come and we saw two common themes. One was that there was an increased use of digital systems and the second was the increased role of communication between components (networking).

So why open standards?

You mean why not Microsoft? (Laughs) Without open standards you cannot get broad involvement and it was all about engaging the community. Java is a language and you cannot erect barriers to communication as a general philosophy.

In some way the big difference between Microsoft and Sun is that we are two competing strategies for life. You can either go for a big piece of a small pie or a small piece of a large pie. We tend to go for a small piece of the large pie and try to make the pie larger.

Developers complain that Java is increasingly becoming a heavier language. What are your thoughts on this?

I disagree. Java is as light as ever. The piece that is getting heavier is the API (application programming interface) "� the server APIs, the numerical APIs, the 3D graphics APIs. This is because of the huge diversity in the way Java is being used.

Java can be small but then it will solve only a small set of problems. The heaviness, as you call it, is being driven by the different kind of stuff that the developer community is dragging Java into. The possibilities are limitless.

What kind of applications will Java will increasingly get used for?

In infrastructure software, in cell phones and lot of it in automobiles eventually. I think there will be big movement in the next five to six years where you will see cars and trucks being treated as software platforms. For example, your day planner could be integrated with your car in the future. But the steepest slope of adoption will be in the gaming industry "� it is pretty cool.

What about the other competing strategy for life, .NET?

.NET will continue. They are not succeeding on a large scale because of issues with security and reliability. .NET is good and Microsoft is saying the right words but the stuff they do..... At the end of the day Microsoft has more money than God. It is not encumbered by ethics and is a formidable competitor.

We have one last question. Where do you think Java is weak? We'd appreciate an unbiased answer.

There are no intrinsic weaknesses in Java. But there are weaknesses around the choices that the market has made. Most companies do not invest or provide facilities for scientific computation and hence Java is not being used much in that space.

My background is doing science and I think that a lot of work that Sun does today could be done better. Today, Sun is not investing as much as I would like in scientific computation because the economic model does not sustain it.