James Gosling (born May 19, 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...

. Gosling was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 2004 for the conception and development of the architecture for the Java programming language and for contributions to window systems.

Early life

Gosling attended

William Aberhart High School William Aberhart High School is a public senior high school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which teaches grades 10, 11, and 12. It is operated by the Calgary Board of Education. It is a comprehensive English and French Immersion school of 1300 stude ...

in Calgary, Alberta. While in high school, he wrote some of the software to analyze data from the ISIS 2 satellite, working for the

University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...

physics department. He received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

from the University of Calgary and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, all in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

. He wrote a version of Emacs called

Gosling Emacs Gosling Emacs (often shortened to "Gosmacs" or "gmacs") is a discontinued Emacs implementation written in 1981 by James Gosling in C. Gosling initially allowed Gosling Emacs to be redistributed with no formal restrictions, as required by the "E ...

(Gosmacs) while working toward his doctorate. He built a multi-processor version of Unix for a 16-way computer system while at Carnegie Mellon University, before joining Sun Microsystems. He also developed several

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

s and mail systems there. Gosling has two children, Katie and Kelsey, who are half siblings from Gosling's two marriages.

Career & contributions

Gosling was with Sun Microsystems between 1984 and 2010 (26 years). At Sun he invented an early Unix windowing system called

NeWS News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

, which became a lesser-used alternative to the still used

X Window The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

, because Sun did not give it an open source license. He is known as the father of the

. He got the idea for the

Java VM A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describe ...

while writing a program to port software from a

PERQ The PERQ, also referred to as the Three Rivers PERQ or ICL PERQ, was a pioneering workstation computer produced in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. In June 1979, the company took its very first order from the UK's Rutherford Appleton La ...

by translating Perq Q-Code to VAX assembler and emulating the hardware. He is generally credited with having invented the

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

programming language in 1994. He created the original design of Java and implemented the language's original compiler and

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

. Gosling traces the origins of the approach to his early graduate student days, when he created a p-code virtual machine for the lab's

DEC VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

computer, so that his professor could run programs written in

UCSD Pascal UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (U ...

. In the work leading to Java at Sun, he saw that architecture-neutral execution for widely distributed programs could be achieved by implementing a similar philosophy: always program for the same virtual machine. Another contribution of Gosling's was co-writing the "

bundle Bundle or Bundling may refer to: * Bundling (packaging), the process of using straps to bundle up items Biology * Bundle of His, a collection of heart muscle cells specialized for electrical conduction * Bundle of Kent, an extra conduction pat ...

" program, known as "shar", a utility thoroughly detailed in

Brian Kernighan Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co- ...

and

Rob Pike Robert "Rob" Pike (born 1956) is a Canadian programmer and author. He is best known for his work on the Go (programming language), Go programming language and at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team and was involved in the creation o ...

's book '' The Unix Programming Environment''. He left Sun Microsystems on April 2, 2010, after it was acquired by the Oracle Corporation, citing reductions in pay, status, and decision-making ability, along with 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."Shankland, Stephen. (2011-03-28
Java founder James Gosling joins Google
CNET Retrieved on 2012-02-21. He clarified his position during the ''

Oracle v. Google ''Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.'', 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision related to the nature of computer code and copyright law. The dispute centered on the use of parts of the Java programming language's application progr ...

'' trial over Android: "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 chwartz he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun." However, he approved of the court's ruling that APIs should not be copyrightable. In March 2011, Gosling joined

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. Six months later, he followed his colleague Bill Vass and joined a startup called

Liquid Robotics Liquid Robotics is an American marine robotics corporation that designs, manufactures and sells the Wave Glider, a wave and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The Wave Glider harvests energy from ocean waves for propulsion. With thi ...

. In late 2016, Liquid Robotics was acquired by

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

. Following the acquisition, Gosling left Liquid Robotics to work at

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

as Distinguished Engineer in May 2017. He is an advisor at the Scala company Lightbend, Independent Director at

Jelastic Jelastic is a cloud platform software vendor that provides multi-cloud Platform as a Service-based on container technology for hosting service providers, ISVs, telecommunication companies, enterprises and developers. The platform is available as ...

, and Strategic Advisor for

Eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as e ...

, and is a board member of DIRTT Environmental Solutions.

Awards

For his achievement, the

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

elected him as a Foreign Associate member. *2002: awarded ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...

'' Innovation Award. *2002: awarded '' The Flame Award'' USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award. *2007: made an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the cen ...

. The Order is Canada's second highest civilian honor. Officers are the second highest grade within the Order. *2013: became a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the Association for Computing Machinery. *2015: awarded

IEEE John von Neumann Medal The IEEE John von Neumann Medal was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1990 and may be presented annually "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology." The achievements may be theoretical, technological, or ...

*2019: named a Computer History Museum

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

for the conception, design, and implementation of the

programming language.Computer History Museum names James Gosling a 2019 Fellow
/ref>

Books

Ken Arnold Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot Arnold (born 1958) is an American computer programmer well known as one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling video game ''Rogue'', for his contributions to the original Berkeley ( BSD) distribution of Uni ...

, James Gosling, David Holmes, ''The Java Programming Language, Fourth Edition'', Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, * James Gosling,

Bill Joy William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO at ...

Guy L. Steele Jr. Guy Lewis Steele Jr. (; born October 2, 1954) is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages and technical standards. Biography Steele was born in Missouri ...

Gilad Bracha Gilad Bracha is a software engineer at F5 Networks, and formerly at Google, where he was on the Dart programming language team. He is creator of the Newspeak language, and co-author of the second and third editions of the Java Language Specificati ...

, ''The Java Language Specification, Third Edition'', Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, * Ken Arnold, James Gosling, David Holmes, ''The Java Programming Language, Third Edition'', Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000, * James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele Jr., Gilad Bracha, ''The Java Language Specification, Second Edition'', Addison-Wesley, 2000, * Gregory Bollella (Editor), Benjamin Brosgol, James Gosling, Peter Dibble, Steve Furr, David Hardin, Mark Turnbull, ''The Real-Time Specification for Java'', Addison Wesley Longman, 2000, * Ken Arnold, James Gosling, ''The Java programming language Second Edition'', Addison-Wesley, 1997, * Ken Arnold, James Gosling, ''The Java programming language'', Addison-Wesley, 1996, * James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele Jr., ''The Java Language Specification'', Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1996, * James Gosling, Frank Yellin, The Java Team, ''The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 2: Window Toolkit and Applets'', Addison-Wesley, 1996, * James Gosling, Frank Yellin, The Java Team, ''The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 1: Core Packages'', Addison-Wesley, 1996, * James Gosling, Henry McGilton,
The Java language Environment: A white paper
', Sun Microsystems, 1996 * James Gosling,

David S. H. Rosenthal David Stuart Holmes Rosenthal (born 1948 in Cambridge, United Kingdom) is a British-American computer scientist. Biography Rosenthal is the son of Michael David Holmes Rosenthal and Marjorie Mary "Molly" Rosenthal (both deceased). His brother M ...

, Michelle J. Arden, ''The NeWS Book : An Introduction to the Network/Extensible Window System (Sun Technical Reference Library)'', Springer, 1989,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gosling, James 1955 births Canadian bloggers Canadian computer programmers Canadian computer scientists Canadian inventors Carnegie Mellon University alumni Emacs Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Free software programmers Java (programming language) Living people Officers of the Order of Canada Open source people People from Calgary Programming language designers Solaris people Sun Microsystems people University of Calgary alumni Winners of The Economist innovation awards Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering

Early life

Career & contributions

Awards

Books

See also

References