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Celebrating 10 years of Java and our technological productivity

A look back on the last 10 years of the network age

By Max Goff, JavaWorld.com, 05/23/05

Page 2 of 7

No, Sun didn't invent bytecode. Nor did it invent the concept of the VM or object-oriented programming. But Java brought the right mix of technologies to the right audience at the right time, and it made sense. Point of fact: There have been many pretenders to the throne in the wake of Java's success—thoughts for a candle yet to come—because, no doubt, of the sensible approach to the problem that Java yielded. How can we achieve portable behavior otherwise, once something like a browser becomes ubiquitous?

Candle Eight: Technology evangelism

Sun didn't invent the idea of technology evangelism either. A guy named Guy Kawasaki, formerly of Apple, was probably the first official, full-time TE entitled as such. Emerging in the mid-1980s, Kawasaki touted the then embryonic Macintosh system to software developers. And the TE approach worked. Fast-forward 10 years…

The Java platform deserved and needed a bit of theater, which is what technology evangelism is at its best. So in addition to passion and pathos, Miko Matsumura, the first Java technology evangelist, provided theatrics, entertainment, and ubergeek-presence during the critical early days of JavaSoft at Sun. His antics ran the gamut, from the sublime (the JavaRing/JavaSpaces demo at JavaOne '98) to the ridiculous (that same year, dressed as Java-mascot Duke, Matsumura flamboyantly bungee-jumped off a San Francisco Bay Area bridge to garner publicity for Java). When Matsumura left Sun, the salad days of Java evangelism were over. Those of us who remained to continue the mission at Sun quickly discovered that the evangelism role necessarily transforms into more of an educational service as the goals of evangelism are achieved.

Technology evangelism, as such, still lives on at Sun. But since the early days of Java and Matsumura, the concept of technology evangelism has taken hold in a number of different firms and is considerably more common in technology circles today, which was not the case before Java.

Candle Seven: Gosling, the programmer's programmer

Can you name a truly famous programmer prior to James Gosling? Besides Bill Joy?

Perhaps a few names come to mind. But none has matched the iconoclastic presence of Sir James. Part software demigod, part corporate quipster, Gosling is a model statesman for the techno-celeb mantle that never seemed to fit Bill Joy very well.

Prior to Java, Gosling was probably best known for having invented the text editor Emacs. With Java, he emerged from Joy's shadow to become the leading personality (sorry, Linus) for geek-enclaves globally. James Gosling is living proof that nice guys sometimes do very well indeed.

Gosling's presumptive role as one of the leads (if not the lead) of the aboriginal Green project (which led to Oak, which ultimately led to Java) has transformed his public personae into one of the most recognizable Internet icons of the current epoch. Having watched, witnessed, and worked with Gosling at Java events in the late '90s and early '00s, I can personally attest to the near-mythic appeal he seems to have with software developers around the world. Prior to Java, that sort of techno-celebrity mystic may have been achieved by a few names—perhaps an Edison or a Tesla, or perhaps Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, although their 100 percent pure-geek credentials are questionable. But now, some 10 years into the Java-fed network age, a slew of geeks has risen to modern prominence including Gosling, Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Tim Berners-Lee, Nicholas Negroponte, Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Ray Kurtzweil, Steven Mann, Kevin Warwick, and a gaggle of others. With this candle, let us celebrate the celebrated, those who have risen to prominence based on laudable contributions to the digital noosphere.

 

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