James Gosling

James Arthur Gosling, OC (born May 19, 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.

Education and career

James Gosling received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Calgary and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. While working towards his doctorate, he wrote a version of Emacs called Gosling Emacs (Gosmacs), and before joining Sun Microsystems he built a multi-processor version of Unix while at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as several compilers and mail systems.

Between 1984 and 2010, Gosling was with Sun Microsystems. He is known as the father of the Java programming language.

On April 2, 2010, Gosling left Sun Microsystems which had recently been acquired by the Oracle Corporation. Regarding why he left, Gosling cited reductions in pay, status, decision-making ability, change of role, and ethical challenges. He has since taken a very critical stance towards Oracle in interviews, noting that "During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle, where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle." Later, during the Oracle v. Google trial over Android, he clarified his position saying "Just because Sun didn't have patent suits in our genetic code doesn't mean we didn't feel wronged. While I have differences with Oracle, in this case they are in the right. Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan [Schwartz]: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun."