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James Gosling Appointed to the Order of Canada

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the make-the-bad-man-stop dept.

Andrija Ifkovic writes "James Gosling, the creator of Java language and a VP of Sun has been appointed to the Order of Canada. 'The Order of Canada recognizes outstanding lifetime achievement and contributions to society and the country by Canadians from all walks of life.' This is the highest honor Canada can bestow upon its citizens."

7 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Congrats by FreeKill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While the Order of Canada is indeed prestigious to Canadian citizens, it's sometimes hard to take it 100% seriously as a huge honor when Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) also received the same reward for their "contributions to Canadian Culture"

    1. Re:Congrats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While the Order of Canada is indeed prestigious to Canadian citizens, it's sometimes hard to take it 100% seriously as a huge honor when Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) also received the same reward for their "contributions to Canadian Culture"

      Why don't you first strip Mick Jagger of his knighthood and then we'll talk about taking things seriously.

    2. Re:Congrats by Jack+Action · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or giving Louis L'Amour the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  2. Not really... by StressGuy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They are entertainers...and the characters are pretty funny. I don't think that, just because thier characters are buffoons means they are less talented or deserving.

    Case in point: I don't think anyone would question the talents of Peter Sellers, yet Inspector Clueso is far more of a buffoon then either of the two.

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
  3. Re:An award by ADRA · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Well written Java programs aren't slow
    2. Poor programmers don't know how to optimize their code to run well
    3. Java makes it easy for even poor programmers to do their job

    Take these three statements and you have your truth on Java. Any single piece of code can be made to grind your system to a halt. Its nothing special to Java, but since the only client-side Java apps you've been exposed to are apparently ass, then you'll never know.

    What Java and any other modern high level language allows for are people who aren't necessarily the best programmers to still do their jobs. Do I see you wanting to go out and build business apps, or are you more likely to make super-cool widget X? Since you're choosing to do the more interesting widget, someone's left to build that business app. If all there were only 'good' programmers in our industry, only a very very few things would ever be done. Since we don't live in that world, we have to make less optimal programmers as effective as possible.

    --
    Bye!
  4. Re:Couldn't give the OoC to a better person by WGR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are several Canadians who have also developed programming languages of greater significance the Java, which is a derivative of C/C++ so not completely original.

    Ken Iverson, who created the APL language, was a Canadian. He was giving the ACM Turing award for this, but never received the Order of Canada.

    Tim Bray, one of the main developers of XML, is also a Canadian.

    Rob Pike, developer of Plan9 and Inferno, and creator of many Unix utilities, is also Canadian

    Brian Kernighan, co=developer of AWK and co-author of "The C Programming Language" book is also Canadian.

    There are even more.
  5. The Queen tried it in Fiji in 86 and failed by HighOrbit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back in the '80s, a majority Indo-Fijian government was elected. (There is major ethnic strife between Indians and indigenous Fijians). The indigenous Fijians (who controlled the military) overthrew the elected government and declared their leader Prime-Minister. IIRC, the Queen instructed the Governor-General to refuse consent and tried to reappoint the elected Government. The military then declared a republic and deposed the Governor-General, ending the Monarchy in Fiji.

    So those constitutional checks are only effective if backed by sufficient force. As a practical matter, a Government of sufficient power (popular or otherwise) would be free to ignore the Monarchy.