Aromas of Java

Know the man






James Gosling, Vice President, Java Technology Architect Sun Microsystems Inc. 





James Gosling more popularly known as the 'Father of Java' or the 'Java Guru' received a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, Canada in 1977. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. The title of his thesis was "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints". 





He is currently a VP & Fellow at Sun Microsystems. He has built satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of UNIX®, several compilers, mail systems and window managers. He has also built a WYSIWYG text editor, a constraint based drawing editor and a text editor called "Emacs" for UNIX® systems. 





At Sun his early activity was as lead engineer of the NeWS window system. He did the original design of the Java programming language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. He has recently been a contributor to the Real-Time Specification for Java. He is currently a researcher at Sun labs where his primary interest is software development tools. 





The 'Green Team'





Three professionals namely Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, and James Gosling of Sun initiated the process of discovering the 'next wave' in computing, as a small closed-door project. The project was called 'Green Project' and hence the team 'Green Team.' The initial strength of the team was as low as 13 and they came to the conclusion that 'convergence' of digitally controlled consumer devices and computers could be the next big-thing.











The team went into hibernation for 18 months in an anonymous office on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, and worked around the clock. In the summer of 1992, they emerged with a working demo, an interactive, handheld home-entertainment device controller with an animated touchscreen user interface. 





The device was called *7 ("StarSeven"), named after an "answer your phone from any extension" feature of the phone system in the Green Team office. 











The baptism





The team developed StarSeven, an amazing device that could run a wide range entertainment platforms and appliances, because it ran on an entirely, processor-independent language created by Green Team member James Gosling. It was then named 'OAK,' after the tree outside his window.

However, due to some legal complications the name was changed to Java. The name struck to them during a visit to a local coffee shop, after the famous 'Java Coffee.'





Heavenly match





Once the technology was developed the hunt for its market began. The first target was the digital cable television. But probably, the technology was too ahead of its time and the concept did not pick up. The team was disillusioned and the two big questions that were bothering them were: 'What to do with this technology?' and 'What to do with our lives?'





It was then that the Internet had started picking up and was becoming popular as a way of moving media content -- text, graphics, video -- throughout a network of heterogeneous devices using HTML. And, the inevitable answer to all this was 'Java' because it fit perfectly with the way applications were written, delivered, and used on the Internet. "It was just an incredible accident. And it was patently obvious that the Internet and Java was a match made in heaven. So that's what we did," were the comments of James Gosling.





The first Java browser





The first Java browser developed was called 'WebRunner' after the movie Blade Runner. WebRunner later known as HotJava, was an impressive demo that gave life to animated, moving objects and dynamic executable content inside a Web browser, for the first time, ever. 





Download, download, download…





With pounding hearts and shaking knees the first version of Java was made public, for the developers to get the taste of it and decide its fate. The team would jump whenever somebody would download Java. "Seven downloads! Look, somebody in Australia is downloading now, and we don't even know who it is--that's eight!" 





In few months the count grew to thousands of download and the team started receiving feedback from developers. The team would promptly reply to the queries of the people. The word spread and then came press, interviews, the promotional requirements, and the speaking engagements. The team worked like nutcase maniacs to make the whole thing a roaring success. 



Sun, Netscape join hands






After a long session of 'tough words and big numbers', Sun's Eric Schmidt and George Paolini shook hands with Netscape's Marc Andreessen on an agreement to integrate Java technology into the omnipresent, omnipotent Navigator browser. The audience was awestruck to see the prospect of Navigator being able to open these new, mysterious, and simple Java technology-based applets on any Web page from any platform, and knew that they were witnessing the beginnings of 'something very big.'



What next?






Since then Java has come a long way, new versions of Java SDK, its enterprise edition J2EE, the sandbox, applets, thousands of Java technology-oriented startups, over a thousand books on Java technology, JavaBeans architecture, Java Studio, Netscape Communicator, thousands of Internet service providers, millions of Internet users, electronic commerce, servlets, Java Foundation Classes, Enterprise JavaBeans components, JavaOS for Business, J2ME for wireless devices and commitments from major players such as IBM. 





Recently we have been hearing IBM and the open source community asking Sun to make Java open source. What is the next step? Will Java be open source? And several such questions are there in people's mind. Hopefully James Gosling will address these concerns in the forthcoming SunTech Days.