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James Gosling Appointed to the Order of Canada
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."
Why is James Gosling is receiving the OoC?
I was just looking through the Java source and it says "// Author: Joyce Hatto"
Trolling is a art,
Highest honor? Bah! Stanley Cup tickets are the highest honor that can be bestoyed upon any real Canadian.
Look everybody, Canada is a country too! They have awards and everything!
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"
So now we get to blame Canada for Java too? Woohoo! Is there nothing they are not at fault for?
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
Pam's from up here. At least we're not responsible for Anna though. Only the USA could produce a trainwreck of that magnitude.
As opposed to our 'Freedom Medal' which you get if you really fu*k up badly.
Well, no. See for well over a century we have been an independant country up here in Canada. Yes, we are still a member of the Commonwealth (along with a lot of other countries you might know like Australia and New Zealand etc), and the Queen is still a symbolic head of the Commonwealth, but we are a completely independant country with our own Constitution, Laws and everything. In practice the Queen has zero political power in Canada, its all symbolic and traditional nothing more. Thus we have our own awards.
:)
The thing is, most of us don't see that as a bad thing, whereas you US folks have this pre-conditioned distrust of Royalty for some unfathomable reason - probably something to do with that whole "Tea" issue in Boston way back when. I admit it, the King made a mistake back then OK?. If you would just get over that though, I am sure we could let you back into the Commonwealth
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Well, no. See for well over a century we have been an independent country up here in Canada.
...
Not only that, but unlike the US, Canada has equal rights for women, permits gay marriages, and solved the whole abortion debate decades ago.
Plus, they have Nelly Furtado. Think about it
And, at one point, I happened to be away from my Army unit on back-to-back training courses when the Queen visited - and so was the only member of my unit not to have a medal from that visit. Dang.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
American money has the symbol of the illuminati and an oath to an imaginary supernatural being. I think canada wins here.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
As someone who spent the better part of a day trying to get Eclipse, Swing, Tomcat, and the JDK set up, I think he should have had the medal pinned to his scrotum.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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!
In day to day practise yes, but in truth the Governor General and in turn the Queen do have some very important political power. The powers that the GG (and the Queen) hold are part of the checks and balances of government in Canada preventing an "unscrupulous Prime Minister" from doing too much harm.
The GG (as the representative of the head of state) and the head of state (currently the Queen, but will be a King) are the only ones allowed to dissolve parliament and call an election. The Prime Minister is not allowed. The GG also gives Royal Ascent to new laws. By tradition the GG will dissolve parliament and pass Royal Ascent when the Prime Minister asks so that a new federal election can be called and new laws can come into effect. Theoretically the Queen (by way of the GG in Canada and other commonwealth nations) can dissolve parliament at any time and can withhold Royal Ascent. But like in England, if this happened there would be a political firestorm kicked up. This happened once in Canada in 1926 when the GG did not dissolve a minority government as requested by the Prime Minister. In Australia where the GG has the same role, their GG dissolved the government in 1975 due to a crisis in government. In both cases this kicked up a lot of debate on the role of the GG.
Only the Queen (or King) can appoint a GG, but by tradition appoints someone suggested by the PM.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I thought "Dubya" was born in Connecticut.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Rather than giving Gosling the order of Canada, wouldn't it be better form for Gosling and Canada to extend a common implementation of Comparable?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Here's an independent confirmation: Although it has been written in various places that Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas received the Order of Canada for their contribution to Canadian culture, a phone call to Rideau Hall revealed that they were not members of the Order of Canada.
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.