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Interviews: Ask James Gosling About Java and Ocean Exploring Robots

Posted by samzenpus on from the ask-away dept.

James Gosling is probably best known for creating the Java programming language while working at Sun Microsystems. Currently, he is the chief software architect at Liquid Robotics. Among other projects, Liquid Robotics makes the Wave Glider, an autonomous, environmentally powered marine robot. James has agreed to take a little time from the oceangoing robots and answer any questions you have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

2 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Death Match by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Thats not a katana in Stallmans hand dummy, its his dick.

  2. Your thoughts on the Java Language Environment by thylordroot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In 1996, you collaborated with Henry McGilton to write The Java Language Environment, which describes your rationale for the design decisions you've made in creating Java. In this document, you expouse a number of ideas which are (or at least at the time were) controversial, like the "constant-in-class pattern" in favoring enumerations (which later became supported in Java 1.5), the lack of need for structure or union types, the lack of need for unsigned integral types (well, except for char), and the lack of need for operator overloading. Now that 17 years have passed since that document was published, have you changed your stance on any of these decisions?