5
2008
Hanging out with James Gosling in Canberra
An article by Glen
In a very cool set of circumstances I had the chance to hang out with James Gosling this afternoon at a Canberra Q&A session. There were only six of us there, and we had an hour with an open agenda: ask whatever you like! So I did…
JAG is one very loveable character. The hardcore software engineer who made it big, changed the world, and still remains a nice guy.
I asked him a bunch of questions around Dynamic Languages, the Closure proposal, the status of Swing, his feeling about the growth of OSX (and why doesn’t he use a macbook any more 
, and how he felt around the perceived growing complexity of the platform. It was awesome. Boy he gave some candid answers – he certainly has some strong feelings in the language design space (which I guess can be expected!).
One thing question that was asked (weirdly enough, not by me), was about with the recent hires around JRuby & Jython, is Sun sidelining Groovy? James had some nice things to say about Groovy, actually, and reiterated that really it’s a numbers game for Sun. Big numbers of Ruby and Python developers to lure to the platform, fewer (but growing) numbers of Groovy developers already productive there.
This finally made sense to me. If you’re a Sun bean counter, you’re not looking at Groovy’s beautiful platform interoperability, pragmatic syntax, or easy transition for Java developers. You’re just looking at trying to drag numbers to the platform. So there’s plenty of Groovy love at Sun, and don’t look too hard into those recent hires around other languages.
Huge thank you to Danny from Sun for the invite. I had an incredible time!
About the Author: Glen Smith
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Glen Smith
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It’s fantastic that Canberra was included on James Gosling’s agenda. I believe that another of James’ agenda items, his address to the National Press Club, will appear on ABC1 tomorrow and again on ABC1 and ABC2 on Thursday.
I’m guessing the discussion about the growing complexity of the Java platform would have been very interesting … is it possible to provide a precis?
damn you should have asked him to wear a Groovy t-shirt at JavaOne
Well, I’m not planning to argue James, and indeed his answer makes sense. However, even if Sun is just looking “to drag numbers to the platform”, they will finally need to make the platform more appealing. And I think this is the point where having people from JRuby, Jython, Groovy (and other dynlangs) in the same space will help a lot. Moreover, I hope Sun is not doing so badly lately that they don’t allow to hire a couple of people
(I hope this didn’t go out too harsh, as it was rather meant to be a joke).
cheers,
./alex
–
.w( the_mindstorm )p.
and why doesnt he use a macbook anymore? tell us.
are you gonna write up those questions and his answers for us?!