https://thenewstack.io/java-at-30-the-genius-behind-the-code-that-changed-tech/ TNS OK SUBSCRIBE Join our community of software engineering leaders and aspirational developers. Always stay in-the-know by getting the most important news and exclusive content delivered fresh to your inbox to learn more about at-scale software development. EMAIL ADDRESS REQUIRED [ ] SUBSCRIBE RESUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED It seems that you've previously unsubscribed from our newsletter in the past. Click the button below to open the re-subscribe form in a new tab. When you're done, simply close that tab and continue with this form to complete your subscription. RE-SUBSCRIBE The New Stack does not sell your information or share it with unaffiliated third parties. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Welcome and thank you for joining The New Stack community! Please answer a few simple questions to help us deliver the news and resources you are interested in. FIRST NAME REQUIRED [ ] LAST NAME REQUIRED [ ] COMPANY NAME REQUIRED [ ] COUNTRY REQUIRED [Select ... ] ZIPCODE REQUIRED [ ] Great to meet you! Tell us a bit about your job so we can cover the topics you find most relevant. What is your job level? REQUIRED [Select ... ] [ ] Which of these most closely describes your job role? REQUIRED [Select ... ] [ ] How many employees are in the organization you work with? REQUIRED [Select ... ] What option best describes the type of organization you work for? REQUIRED [Select ... ] [ ] Which of the following best describes your organization's primary industry? REQUIRED [Select ... ] [ ] LINKEDIN PROFILE URL [ ] Welcome! We're so glad you're here. You can expect all the best TNS content to arrive Monday through Friday to keep you on top of the news and at the top of your game. What's next? Check your inbox for a confirmation email where you can adjust your preferences and even join additional groups. Follow TNS on your favorite social media networks. Become a TNS follower on LinkedIn. Check out the latest featured and trending stories while you wait for your first TNS newsletter. PREV 1 of 2 NEXT VOXPOP As a JavaScript developer, what non-React tools do you use most often? Angular 0% Astro 0% Svelte 0% Vue.js 0% Other 0% I only use React 0% I don't use JavaScript 0% Thanks for your opinion! Subscribe below to get the final results, published exclusively in our TNS Update newsletter: [ ] SUBMIT [ ] Search More Results ARCHITECTURE Cloud Native Ecosystem Containers Databases Edge Computing Infrastructure as Code Linux Microservices Open Source Networking Storage ENGINEERING AI AI Engineering API Management Backend development Data Frontend Development Large Language Models Security Software Development WebAssembly OPERATIONS AI Operations CI/CD Cloud Services DevOps Kubernetes Observability Operations Platform Engineering PROGRAMMING C++ Developer tools Go Java JavaScript Programming Languages Python Rust TypeScript CHANNELS Podcasts Ebooks Events Newsletter TNS RSS Feeds THE NEW STACK About / Contact Sponsors Advertise With Us Contributions PODCASTS EBOOKS EVENTS NEWSLETTER CONTRIBUTE ARCHITECTURE ENGINEERING OPERATIONS PROGRAMMING Cloud Native Ecosystem Containers Databases Edge Computing Infrastructure as Code Linux Microservices Open Source Networking Storage Cycle Expands Beyond Kubernetes: Adds VMs, Bare Metal, FaaS May 14th 2025 11:05am, by Charles Humble The Security Paradox of AI in Cloud Native Development May 13th 2025 12:00pm, by Yotam Ben-Ezra Q&A: Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami on the Cloud Native Enterprise May 12th 2025 7:00am, by Joab Jackson Automate Resource Provisioning: Cut Costs and Developers Are Happy May 7th 2025 12:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain CNCF and Synadia Reach an Agreement on NATS May 5th 2025 7:33am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Containers in the Age of AI: A Chat With New Docker President Mark Cavage May 15th 2025 6:00am, by Joab Jackson Cycle Expands Beyond Kubernetes: Adds VMs, Bare Metal, FaaS May 14th 2025 11:05am, by Charles Humble How to Use AI to Detect PPE Compliance in Edge Environments May 13th 2025 7:00am, by Sathiyadev Thangaswamy How To Build a Kubernetes Operator From Scratch May 6th 2025 4:00pm, by Joshua Masiko VMware's Kubernetes Evolution: Quashing Complexity May 6th 2025 6:00am, by Michelle Gienow How a Python Processing Engine Speeds Time Series Data Processing May 13th 2025 11:00am, by Allyson Boate ElectricSQL Tackles the Challenges of Real-Time Data Synchronization May 13th 2025 6:00am, by Meredith Shubel ACID-Compliant Distributed SQL Enters the Agentic AI Era May 12th 2025 2:00pm, by David Eastman To SQL or Not To SQL: That Is Not the Question May 7th 2025 11:00am, by Hermann Baer Observability 2.0? Or Just Logs All Over Again? May 5th 2025 1:00pm, by Todd Persen How to Use AI to Detect PPE Compliance in Edge Environments May 13th 2025 7:00am, by Sathiyadev Thangaswamy Remote MCP Servers: Inevitable, Not Easy May 12th 2025 12:00pm, by Michael Field Q&A: Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami on the Cloud Native Enterprise May 12th 2025 7:00am, by Joab Jackson Build Edge Native Apps With WebAssembly May 7th 2025 8:00am, by Matt Butcher How To Streamline Edge AI Deployments With Automation May 6th 2025 8:00am, by Sergio Santos Infrastructure Eats Strategy May 14th 2025 5:00am, by Aharon Twizer Pulumi's New Internal Developer Platform Accelerates Cloud Infrastructure Delivery May 6th 2025 3:00pm, by Chris J. Preimesberger How MCP Puts the Good Vibes Into Cloud Native Development Apr 28th 2025 2:00pm, by Eran Bibi OpenTofu Joins CNCF: New Home for Open Source IaC Project Apr 28th 2025 8:13am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Spacelift's Saturnhead AI To Speed DevOps Troubleshooting Apr 24th 2025 5:00am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Linux: Group Management From the Command Line May 11th 2025 8:00am, by Jack Wallen The Pros and Cons of Developing From the Command Line May 7th 2025 3:00pm, by Jack Wallen Linux: An Introduction to User Management May 4th 2025 8:00am, by Jack Wallen Ubuntu Unity 25.04 Brings Back Ubuntu's Biggest Miss May 3rd 2025 7:00am, by Jack Wallen Linux Security Software Turned Against Users May 1st 2025 12:00pm, by Jeffrey Burt Why Microservice Environments Break: Lack of Unification May 12th 2025 6:07am, by Anirudh Ramanathan Why Coordinating Microservice Changes Is Still a Mess Apr 24th 2025 10:00am, by Anirudh Ramanathan How to Implement the Saga Architectural Pattern in Microservices Apr 21st 2025 6:28am, by Zziwa Raymond Ian Scale Microservices Testing Without Duplicating Environments Apr 15th 2025 9:00am, by Arjun Iyer What Agentic Workflows Mean to Microservices Developers Apr 3rd 2025 4:00pm, by Janakiram MSV Python's Open Source DNA Powers Anaconda's New AI Platform May 13th 2025 4:00pm, by Jeffrey Burt The Case for Open AI Tooling: Why Developers Need Sovereignty in the AI Era May 10th 2025 9:00am, by Mike Milinkovich Grafana's eBPF Beyla Future Hinges on OpenTelemetry May 9th 2025 5:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain CNCF and Synadia Reach an Agreement on NATS May 5th 2025 7:33am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Ingest Metrics from Multiple Sources into Prometheus with OTel Collector May 5th 2025 5:03am, by Sharad Regoti CNCF and Synadia Reach an Agreement on NATS May 5th 2025 7:33am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Gateway API or Ingress: A Developer's Guide to Kubernetes Routing May 2nd 2025 6:00am, by Janakiram MSV Synadia Attempts To Reclaim NATS Trademark Back From CNCF Apr 29th 2025 8:00am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols NVIDIA GTC 2025 Wrap-Up: 18 New Products to Watch Apr 18th 2025 11:00am, by Keith Pijanowski How To Read a Traceroute for Network Troubleshooting Apr 17th 2025 2:00pm, by Alessandro Improta Nutanix Unveils Major Platform Expansions at .NEXT 2025 May 8th 2025 12:00pm, by Chris J. Preimesberger Eliminate Application Timeouts With Software-Defined Storage May 8th 2025 9:00am, by Carol Platz Kafka Tiered Storage: Store More, But Pay Less May 7th 2025 2:00pm, by Anil Inamdar How to Choose a Storage Platform for OpenShift Virtualization Apr 30th 2025 2:02pm, by Carol Platz NVIDIA GTC 2025 Wrap-Up: 18 New Products to Watch Apr 18th 2025 11:00am, by Keith Pijanowski AI AI Engineering API Management Backend development Data Frontend Development Large Language Models Security Software Development WebAssembly Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech May 15th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft AI for Developers: How To Start, What To Use and Why It Matters May 15th 2025 5:00am, by Ankit Awasthi API Lets Businesses White-Label AI-Powered Website Builder May 14th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Running AI Workloads Responsibly in the Cloud May 14th 2025 11:00am, by Sam Prakash Bheri Python's Security Savior: Chainguard Battles Supply Chain Risk May 14th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft AI for Developers: How To Start, What To Use and Why It Matters May 15th 2025 5:00am, by Ankit Awasthi Web Devs, Meet the AI Apps You'll Build Next May 13th 2025 3:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Thoughtworks CTO: AI Means We Need Developers More Than Ever May 13th 2025 10:00am, by Jennifer Riggins 3 Stages of Building Self-Healing IT Systems With Multiagent AI May 13th 2025 9:00am, by Joao Freitas To Vibe or Not to Vibe? When and Where To Use Vibe Coding May 12th 2025 3:00pm, by Alexander T. Williams Why APIs Are Essential and MCP Is Optional (for Now) May 8th 2025 8:00am, by Gil Feig What Is Semantic Caching? May 4th 2025 1:00pm, by Bill Doerrfeld How To Set Up a Model Context Protocol Server May 3rd 2025 6:00am, by David Eastman API Sprawl: Not Just a Tech Problem May 2nd 2025 11:30am, by Lori Marshall Introduction to API Management Apr 25th 2025 2:00pm, by TNS Staff Next.js Deployment Spec Simplifies Frontend Hosting May 6th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson A Practical Guide To Building a RAG-Powered Chatbot May 5th 2025 12:00pm, by Pat Patterson JavaScript's Missing Link: Wasp Offers Full Stack Solution Mar 26th 2025 2:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Pagoda: A Web Development Starter Kit for Go Programmers Mar 19th 2025 6:10am, by Loraine Lawson Apollo: GraphQL Now Connects to REST APIs With Little Fuss Mar 11th 2025 7:30am, by B. Cameron Gain Running AI Workloads Responsibly in the Cloud May 14th 2025 11:00am, by Sam Prakash Bheri ElectricSQL Tackles the Challenges of Real-Time Data Synchronization May 13th 2025 6:00am, by Meredith Shubel Using LLMs Right: Leveraging AI for Augmented Data Quality May 12th 2025 10:00am, by Marek Ovcacek Is Model Context Protocol the New API? May 12th 2025 8:03am, by Ed Anuff The Rise of xLMs: Why One-Size-Fits-All AI Models Are Fading May 11th 2025 9:00am, by Victor Szczerba API Lets Businesses White-Label AI-Powered Website Builder May 14th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Why Canva Chose MCP Server Over AI Agent for App Developers May 12th 2025 11:02am, by Loraine Lawson Svelte Adds Asynchronous Sync Inside Components May 10th 2025 7:00am, by Loraine Lawson AI-Generated Code Needs Refactoring, Say 76% of Developers May 8th 2025 3:00pm, by Lawrence E Hecht Next.js Deployment Spec Simplifies Frontend Hosting May 6th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson API Lets Businesses White-Label AI-Powered Website Builder May 14th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Remote MCP Servers: Inevitable, Not Easy May 12th 2025 12:00pm, by Michael Field Using LLMs Right: Leveraging AI for Augmented Data Quality May 12th 2025 10:00am, by Marek Ovcacek The Rise of xLMs: Why One-Size-Fits-All AI Models Are Fading May 11th 2025 9:00am, by Victor Szczerba A Guide To Navigating GPU Rentals and AI Cloud Performance May 9th 2025 8:00am, by Jay Crystal Python's Security Savior: Chainguard Battles Supply Chain Risk May 14th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft Shadow AI Isn't a Threat: It's a Wake-up Call May 14th 2025 8:00am, by Oren Penso The Security Paradox of AI in Cloud Native Development May 13th 2025 12:00pm, by Yotam Ben-Ezra Linux: Group Management From the Command Line May 11th 2025 8:00am, by Jack Wallen Grafana's eBPF Beyla Future Hinges on OpenTelemetry May 9th 2025 5:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain Your AI Coding Buddy Is Always Available at 2 a.m. May 15th 2025 8:00am, by Michelle Gienow AI for Developers: How To Start, What To Use and Why It Matters May 15th 2025 5:00am, by Ankit Awasthi Web Devs, Meet the AI Apps You'll Build Next May 13th 2025 3:00pm, by Loraine Lawson To Vibe or Not to Vibe? When and Where To Use Vibe Coding May 12th 2025 3:00pm, by Alexander T. Williams Why Pure AI Coding Won't Work for Enterprise Software May 12th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft Build Edge Native Apps With WebAssembly May 7th 2025 8:00am, by Matt Butcher GraalVM (Finally) Gets Java for WebAssembly Apr 22nd 2025 4:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain Hyperlight Wasm: Azure Goes the Final Wasi Mile Apr 3rd 2025 9:00am, by B. Cameron Gain Endor: WebAssembly-Based Server in the Browser Mar 29th 2025 1:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain Should You Care About Fermyon Wasm Functions on Akamai? Mar 28th 2025 1:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain AI Operations CI/CD Cloud Services DevOps Kubernetes Observability Operations Platform Engineering Cycle Expands Beyond Kubernetes: Adds VMs, Bare Metal, FaaS May 14th 2025 11:05am, by Charles Humble Shadow AI Isn't a Threat: It's a Wake-up Call May 14th 2025 8:00am, by Oren Penso How to Use AI to Detect PPE Compliance in Edge Environments May 13th 2025 7:00am, by Sathiyadev Thangaswamy Introducing AiKA: Backstage Portal AI Knowledge Assistant May 6th 2025 11:00am, by Jennifer Riggins ServiceNow Launches a Control Tower for AI Agents May 6th 2025 10:00am, by Frederic Lardinois Build a Real-Time Voting App With Stream Chat and Next.js May 14th 2025 7:00am, by Ankur Tyagi Streamlining Your Platform Team's Workloads May 9th 2025 9:00am, by Rak Siva 6 Reasons You'll Want To Use MCP for AI Integration Apr 23rd 2025 10:00am, by Ross Kukulinski How to Implement the Saga Architectural Pattern in Microservices Apr 21st 2025 6:28am, by Zziwa Raymond Ian How To Build Scalable and Reliable CI/CD Pipelines With Kubernetes Apr 17th 2025 11:00am, by Neha Surendranath Running AI Workloads Responsibly in the Cloud May 14th 2025 11:00am, by Sam Prakash Bheri Thoughtworks CTO: AI Means We Need Developers More Than Ever May 13th 2025 10:00am, by Jennifer Riggins The Urgent Security Paradox of AI in Cloud Native Development Apr 24th 2025 1:30pm, by Yotam Ben-Ezra Deep Infra Is Building an AI Inference Cloud for Developers Apr 22nd 2025 11:30am, by Frederic Lardinois From Seats to Success: Building Flexible SaaS Pricing for AI Products Apr 20th 2025 10:00am, by Alvaro Morales Ship Fast, Break Nothing: LaunchDarkly's Winning Formula Apr 29th 2025 4:00pm, by Darryl K. Taft 6 Ways AI Is Upending the DevOps Lifecycle Apr 29th 2025 11:00am, by Hannah Culver The Bitnami Open Source Application Catalog Turns 18! Apr 29th 2025 7:00am, by Beltran Rueda Borrego Spacelift's Saturnhead AI To Speed DevOps Troubleshooting Apr 24th 2025 5:00am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Open Source and Container Security Are Fundamentally Broken Apr 21st 2025 11:08am, by Benji Kalman Understanding the Kubernetes Operator Pattern May 14th 2025 9:30am, by Nikita Gulyayev Nutanix Unveils Major Platform Expansions at .NEXT 2025 May 8th 2025 12:00pm, by Chris J. Preimesberger How To Build a Kubernetes Operator From Scratch May 6th 2025 4:00pm, by Joshua Masiko VMware's Kubernetes Evolution: Quashing Complexity May 6th 2025 6:00am, by Michelle Gienow ToolHive Simplifies MCP Server Orchestration with Kubernetes May 2nd 2025 3:05pm, by Joab Jackson Introduction to Observability May 10th 2025 5:05am, by TNS Staff Grafana's eBPF Beyla Future Hinges on OpenTelemetry May 9th 2025 5:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain Observability 2.0? Or Just Logs All Over Again? May 5th 2025 1:00pm, by Todd Persen Ingest Metrics from Multiple Sources into Prometheus with OTel Collector May 5th 2025 5:03am, by Sharad Regoti Explainable AI Needs Explainable Infrastructure May 2nd 2025 10:00am, by Pronnoy Goswami Understanding the Kubernetes Operator Pattern May 14th 2025 9:30am, by Nikita Gulyayev Shadow AI Isn't a Threat: It's a Wake-up Call May 14th 2025 8:00am, by Oren Penso Infrastructure Eats Strategy May 14th 2025 5:00am, by Aharon Twizer 3 Stages of Building Self-Healing IT Systems With Multiagent AI May 13th 2025 9:00am, by Joao Freitas Google AI Infrastructure PM on New TPUs, Liquid Cooling and More May 13th 2025 8:00am, by Frederic Lardinois Streamlining Your Platform Team's Workloads May 9th 2025 9:00am, by Rak Siva Pulumi's New Internal Developer Platform Accelerates Cloud Infrastructure Delivery May 6th 2025 3:00pm, by Chris J. Preimesberger Introducing AiKA: Backstage Portal AI Knowledge Assistant May 6th 2025 11:00am, by Jennifer Riggins How Thoughtworks Bridges the Platform Engineering Gap May 2nd 2025 11:00am, by Todd R. Weiss How Generative AI Informs Platform Engineering Strategy Apr 25th 2025 11:00am, by Manning Book Authors C++ Developer tools Go Java JavaScript Programming Languages Python Rust TypeScript EngFlow Makes C++ Builds 21x Faster and Software a Lot Safer Apr 3rd 2025 3:00pm, by Darryl K. Taft Memory-Safe C: TrapC's Pitch to the C ISO Working Group Mar 12th 2025 7:00am, by David Cassel Bjarne Stroustrup on How He Sees C++ Evolving Mar 7th 2025 6:00am, by David Cassel Curl's Daniel Stenberg on Securing 180,000 Lines of C Code Feb 23rd 2025 6:00am, by David Cassel Introduction to C++ Programming Language Feb 11th 2025 6:00am, by TNS Staff Your AI Coding Buddy Is Always Available at 2 a.m. May 15th 2025 8:00am, by Michelle Gienow Why Canva Chose MCP Server Over AI Agent for App Developers May 12th 2025 11:02am, by Loraine Lawson Atlassian's CTO on Scaling AI While Fueling 'Developer Joy' May 11th 2025 5:00am, by Jennifer Riggins Windows 10 End of Support: Should Developers Be Concerned? May 10th 2025 6:00am, by David Eastman Gemini 2.5 Pro: Google's Coding Genius Gets an Upgrade May 9th 2025 7:00am, by Chris J. Preimesberger Prepare Your Mac for Go Development Apr 12th 2025 7:00am, by Damon M. Garn Pagoda: A Web Development Starter Kit for Go Programmers Mar 19th 2025 6:10am, by Loraine Lawson Microsoft TypeScript Devs Explain Why They Chose Go Over Rust, C# Mar 18th 2025 7:00am, by David Cassel Go Power: Microsoft's Bold Bet on Faster TypeScript Tools Mar 12th 2025 1:00pm, by Darryl K. Taft and Loraine Lawson Introduction to Go Programming Language Jan 17th 2025 9:00am, by TNS Staff Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech May 15th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft GraalVM (Finally) Gets Java for WebAssembly Apr 22nd 2025 4:00pm, by B. Cameron Gain JavaOne 2025: Talks, History, Community, and Scott McNealy Apr 6th 2025 6:00am, by David Cassel Java Modernizes: New Tools for AI and Quantum Age Mar 26th 2025 7:00am, by Chris J. Preimesberger Oracle Ships Java 24: 'AI Is So Yesterday' Says VP Mar 19th 2025 10:00am, by Darryl K. Taft Build a Real-Time Voting App With Stream Chat and Next.js May 14th 2025 7:00am, by Ankur Tyagi Svelte Adds Asynchronous Sync Inside Components May 10th 2025 7:00am, by Loraine Lawson Next.js Deployment Spec Simplifies Frontend Hosting May 6th 2025 12:00pm, by Loraine Lawson Netlify Makes Preview Servers Available May 3rd 2025 5:00am, by Loraine Lawson React Adds New Experimental Animation Feature Apr 26th 2025 11:00am, by Loraine Lawson Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech May 15th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft CHERI on Top: AdaCore's Hardware 'Fix' for Legacy C/C++ Code May 7th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft Code Wars: Rust vs. C in the Battle for Billion-Device Safety May 2nd 2025 4:00pm, by Darryl K. Taft 10 Cross-Platform Options for Building Native Mobile and Web May 2nd 2025 9:00am, by Loraine Lawson JavaScript Framework Reality Check: What's Actually Working Apr 23rd 2025 7:05am, by Alexander T. Williams Python's Security Savior: Chainguard Battles Supply Chain Risk May 14th 2025 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft Python's Open Source DNA Powers Anaconda's New AI Platform May 13th 2025 4:00pm, by Jeffrey Burt How a Python Processing Engine Speeds Time Series Data Processing May 13th 2025 11:00am, by Allyson Boate PyTorch Foundation Welcomes vLLM and DeepSpeed as Hosted Projects May 7th 2025 3:00am, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Build a Python + ChatGPT-3.5 Chatbot in 10 Minutes May 2nd 2025 2:00pm, by Jessica Wachtel Microsoft TypeScript Devs Explain Why They Chose Go Over Rust, C# Mar 18th 2025 7:00am, by David Cassel Go Power: Microsoft's Bold Bet on Faster TypeScript Tools Mar 12th 2025 1:00pm, by Darryl K. Taft and Loraine Lawson Oracle Won't Release 'JavaScript' Without a Fight Jan 11th 2025 5:00am, by Loraine Lawson The Year in JavaScript: Top JS News Stories of 2024 Dec 27th 2024 6:30am, by Loraine Lawson How OOP Developers Can Get To Know TypeScript Through Deno Oct 19th 2024 8:00am, by David Eastman 2025-05-15 09:00:46 Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech AI / Java / Programming Languages Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech From trash-diving teen to tech pioneer, James Gosling's pragmatic genius shaped three decades of Java and modern computing. May 15th, 2025 9:00am by Darryl K. Taft Featued image for: Java at 30: The Genius Behind the Code That Changed Tech Featured image via Unsplash+. The Java programming language turns 30 next week (May 23). The high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language that continues to power systems of all sizes today wouldn't be here if not for its primary creator, James Gosling. I've had the privilege of interviewing and getting to know the man a little bit over the years, ever since Java's premise of enabling programmers to write once, run anywhere revolutionized software development. James Gosling's journey from resourceful Canadian teenager to pioneering world-class programmer offers valuable insights into the evolution of computing over the past several decades. His work on Java created a platform that has empowered countless developers. Throughout his career, Gosling has balanced technical excellence with a playful spirit and clear ethical boundaries -- a combination that has helped shape the modern computing landscape. James Gosling: The Brilliant Mind Behind Java Gosling isn't just the "Father of Java" -- he's a humble genius with an uncanny ability to simplify complex concepts. In a recent conversation, Gosling shared stories from his fascinating journey through tech and reflected on Java's evolution 30 years after he and his team brought it to life. [7ff5c9cc-gos-2-1-1024x358] James Gosling and DKT. The Path To Programming: Resourceful Beginnings Gosling's path to programming reveals much about the innovator he'd become. Growing up with "pretty close to zero money," he turned necessity into creative inspiration. "Toys were diving into people's trash cans and pulling out old televisions," he explained. The first computer he built himself was literally made from a relay rack salvaged from a phone company's discards -- an achievement that demonstrated his early technical aptitude. A pivotal moment came when Gosling's father's friend took him on a tour of the University of Calgary's computer center. "I was just hooked," he recalls. "Screens and blinking lights and tapes -- all kinds of stuff." That curiosity has remained a defining characteristic throughout his career. The teenage Gosling was resourceful, teaching himself programming through unconventional means: dumpster diving for punch cards with passwords. While many teens were working retail jobs, Gosling landed a position with the university's physics department while still in high school, creating software that processed satellite data. "They actually paid me money to have fun," he said about this formative experience. His early programming experiences spanned IBM mainframes with PL/1 and Fortran, PDP-8 assembly and CDC 6400 code. In typical understated fashion, he casually mentioned that he "took a summer job writing a COBOL compiler" -- an undertaking many seasoned programmers would find daunting. Academia to Industry: Finding His Way Gosling's no-nonsense perspective on academia shines through in his descriptions. His characterization of Carnegie Mellon's prestigious computer science PhD program as "fundamentally a Research Institute with grad students as cheap labor" captures his straightforward assessment. Always practical, he took time off during his studies to work at a Bay Area startup before returning to Pittsburgh to complete his degree. His first job after CMU was with IBM Research, and his assessment of IBM remains pointed years later. His characterization of the company as "dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot" delivers insight with dry humor. These early experiences influenced his approach at Sun Microsystems, where he would flourish for most of his career. The Sun Days: Innovation and Pranks Ask Gosling about his favorite times at Sun, and the conversation inevitably turns to the legendary April Fool's pranks. He recalls them as "a terrific amount of work" but "a huge amount of fun" -- a glimpse into the company culture that fostered both innovation and creativity. These weren't simple practical jokes. Gosling recalls putting a Ferrari on a platform in a pond ("conceptually the most spectacular") to make it look like it was floating there. The car belonged to Sun co-founder Bill Joy, however the original plan was to put Sun software chief Eric Schmidt's Ferrari in the pond, but the team was concerned that Schmidt (who went on to become CEO of Google) might get "squirrely" about the prank -- although Schmidt was also pranked. Another was building an elaborate one-hole golf course in Sun CEO Scott McNealy's office, complete with grass, water hazard and sand trap. These engineering challenges required the same creative problem-solving that drove Sun's technical innovations. At Sun, Gosling found a rare environment where technical excellence could thrive alongside playful creativity -- an atmosphere that clearly shaped his approach to technology and problem-solving throughout his career. Java: Creating a Legacy That Changed Everything Java, now 30 years old, stands as Gosling's signature accomplishment. When asked how it feels to have created something so impactful, he shares a humbling perspective: "Every now and then, some people stop me in the street and say, 'Oh, are you James Gosling? Thank you for giving me a career. I've been writing Java code for 20 years, and it's been a great career.' That gives me just an amazing sense of satisfaction," he said. Reflecting on Java's evolution, Gosling mentions features like lambdas (added in JDK 8) as elements he wishes had been in from the beginning. However, he explained his careful approach to language design: "I never wanted to put in something that was not right." The challenge with features like generics and lambdas was determining the best implementation approach -- "the first 90% is easy to figure out, and the last 10% is just super hard," he said. On Oracle's stewardship of Java since acquiring Sun, James offers measured assessment: "They've done better than expected, but I also have to admit that my expectations were pretty low." He credits the community with playing a crucial role in Java's continued development and innovation. "Every now and then, some people stop me in the street and say, 'Oh, are you James Gosling? Thank you for giving me a career. I've been writing Java code for 20 years, and it's been a great career.' That gives me just an amazing sense of satisfaction." --James Gosling, Father of Java Gosling notes that Java has become well-suited for cloud environments, observing that "most of what's happened in the last 30 years has been making Java really, really solid for the cloud." He highlights improvements in multicore processor handling, memory management and especially garbage collection, which he describes as "just phenomenal" in the latest versions. [ab08054a-james_gosling_2008-1018x1024] Beyond Java: Ventures After Sun After Oracle's acquisition of Sun in 2010, Gosling took a break before briefly joining Google. That stint lasted "a whole six months," after which he moved to Liquid Robotics, working on control systems for autonomous ocean robots. This position combined technical challenges with unique perks: "One of the skills you have to have is snorkeling" and "part of the job is to spend a week or a month in Hawaii." The work at Liquid Robotics involved environmental monitoring, with projects studying ocean temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. However, as Gosling notes, "none of the people studying that have any money at all," which created challenges for a VC-funded company. As investors pushed the company toward defense applications, Gosling, uncomfortable with that direction, eventually departed. His next move took him to Amazon Web Services, where he worked on the Greengrass project and other dev tool efforts until his retirement last year. Throughout his career moves, Gosling has consistently followed not just technical interests but ethical considerations as well. On Open Source and Industry Trends: Cutting Through the Hype Regarding open source evolution, Gosling observes that "a lot of people have figured out how to make it work for them," with different models emerging for different contexts. At Sun, open source became "partly about collaboration, partly about Developer Relations, partly about just marketing," offering a bottom-up adoption approach that contrasted with traditional top-down enterprise sales. When asked about the "low code, no code" trend, Gosling expresses skepticism rooted in historical context: "People have been saying low code, no code for decades. That was the pitch for COBOL." He noted that such approaches typically excel in narrow domains but struggle with complexity outside their specific focus areas. On AI and machine learning (ML), Gosling takes issue primarily with terminology: "My biggest problem with AI and ML is just the names." He suggests that "advanced statistical methods" would be a more accurate descriptor than terms that invite misleading analogies to human reasoning. In his view, these technologies represent "extremely complex hammers and screwdrivers": tools that humans use rather than autonomous systems that threaten jobs. Developer Tools and Preferences: Embracing Progress Gosling primarily uses the NetBeans IDE for development, praising its open source, Apache-licensed nature and dedicated community. He expresses frustration with developers who cling to outdated tools: "The thing that drives me nuts the most are people who are madly grasping the '80s or the '70s -- people who still want to use Vi, which was high-tech in the '70s." While acknowledging that he uses Vi occasionally "because Vi is everywhere," Gosling advocates for modern development environments for substantial coding work. The JVM Vision: From Academic Concept to Global Standard Interestingly, the concept that would become the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) originated during Gosling's graduate studies. He had explored ideas around "architecture-neutral distribution format" and experimented with cross-instruction translation between different machine architectures. This early exploration informed the development of the JVM, which has since become a foundational technology enabling not just Java but numerous other languages to run on diverse hardware platforms. The vision of write-once, run-anywhere -- initially dismissed as lacking sufficient mathematical foundation for a PhD thesis -- ultimately transformed software development practices worldwide. More Recent Work: Bridging IoT Gaps at AWS Before his retirement from AWS last year, Gosling worked on Greengrass, an AWS framework for building Internet of Things (IoT) applications. It's a perfect example of Gosling's approach to technology: tackling complex, universal problems with elegant simplicity. "The distance from 'I've got my toy that works' to something that you can actually deploy at scale has a lot of what is essentially boilerplate," Gosling explained with his characteristic ability to make complex ideas suddenly accessible. Greengrass handled all those tedious elements -- over-the-air updates, remote command and control, telemetry, network reliability, security, credential management -- freeing developers to focus on what makes their particular application unique. The device-side part of Greengrass was open sourced, reflecting Gosling's long-standing appreciation for community contributions. This approach yielded benefits, with users creating ports to platforms Amazon hadn't prioritized, like RISC-V -- something that clearly gave him satisfaction. After Greengrass, Gosling joined another AWS project related to software development tools, but it "got caught up in the AI apocalypse." AI Skepticism Meanwhile, in a more recent interview with The New Stack, Gosling offered a more skeptical view of the AI revolution sweeping through the tech industry. "It's mostly a scam," he stated bluntly, describing AI as "a marketing term that comes with its own bucket of toxic waste." While acknowledging the impressive mathematics behind these systems, Gosling expressed concern that the AI label obscures their true nature as advanced statistical techniques. "The number of grifters and hypesters in the tech industry is mind-rotting." --James Gosling, Father of Java He was particularly critical of venture capitalists driving the AI hype, stating that "the number of grifters and hypesters in the tech industry is mind-rotting" and that VCs "only care about a successful exit" rather than building genuinely useful technology. He predicted that "the vast majority of AI investments will get sucked into a black hole." Is It a Vibe? AI Coding Tools: Impressive Demos, Limited Utility When it comes to generative AI coding assistants, Gosling acknowledged their initial impressiveness but highlighted significant limitations. "You get started on a vibe coding session, and it can actually be pretty cool," he said, but warned that "as soon as your project gets even slightly complicated, they pretty much always blow their brains out." The fundamental problem, according to Gosling, is that these tools work by scraping existing code samples and can only replicate what they've seen before. This creates a fundamental mismatch with professional software development, where "the interesting stuff is never repeated" because good solutions are packaged into libraries that everyone uses. "You get started on a vibe coding session, and it can actually be pretty cool, but as soon as your project gets even slightly complicated, they pretty much always blow their brains out." --James Gosling, Father of Java Rather than replacing programmers, Gosling sees AI's most valuable coding application as "being the documentation that nobody wants to write" -- essentially serving as an intelligent search engine that understands how code works and can explain how to use specific APIs or features. Java's Evolution: Language Features and Runtime Improvements When asked about recent Java developments, Gosling acknowledged some valuable language enhancements: "A bunch of the stuff that's come through with type inferencing has been really nice. You know, the way that array declarations have evolved have been pretty nice. I think that could be pushed more." However, he emphasized that Java's most impressive recent advancements have been in its runtime environment and libraries. "The code quality coming out of the JVM these days is really good. The garbage collector in the modern versions of the JVM is just stunning. The performance of threading is really lovely," he explained. He particularly praised improvements in memory management and performance predictability: "The Java storage management has been more efficient than the malloc, than the C storage management for really long, but now it's just stunning." Garbage collection pauses that once took "10 or 20 seconds" can now be reduced to milliseconds with careful tuning, and "if you're not careful, it's still well under a second." The JVM now also handles "arbitrarily, absurdly large memory spaces" with impressive efficiency. Programming Languages for Critical Infrastructure When asked what programming language should be used to rebuild the FAA's air traffic control system, Gosling rejected the premise of the question. "It's like designing a house but starting out with what brand of hammer are we gonna buy," he said. Instead, he advocated for understanding the problem domain first -- including communication systems, international regulations, airplane tracking, collision avoidance and flight path planning -- before selecting appropriate technologies for different components. "Base your decisions on the properties of what you're trying to accomplish," he advised, though he did note that Java would excel for large-scale systems where reliability is crucial. The Future of Programming in an AI World Despite AI's advances, Gosling firmly believes programming remains an essential skill. "If I had a young kid today, I would absolutely be teaching them programming," he stated, explaining that "even if AI takes over, people have to understand how their systems work." He dismissed claims by tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff that AI will reduce the need for engineers as "entirely self-serving horseshit," seeing such statements as positioning tactics and thinly veiled threats to extract more work from employees. "If I had a young kid today, I would absolutely be teaching them programming. Even if AI takes over, people have to understand how their systems work." --James Gosling, Father of Java Java's Longevity Secret When asked why Java has endured for three decades while other languages have faded, Gosling cited several factors: solving real problems, respecting users, maintaining backward compatibility, improving developer productivity and prioritizing reliability. "It was never about being stylish," he explained. "It was always about being effective in getting the job done, helping engineers get their job done." This focus on practical utility rather than trendiness has served Java well, particularly in enterprise environments where software "has to work every fucking time." Oracle's Stewardship: Better Than Expected Moreover, Gosling gave Oracle a "B+" for its stewardship of Java since acquiring Sun Microsystems. "I was really terrified of what they would do because their track record has been rape and pillage," he admitted, "I'm just astonished at how well they've done." While he wished the Java team had received more financial support, Gosling praised Oracle for insulating the team from corporate interference -- "Oracle hasn't fucked with them" -- which exceeded his initial expectations of failure. "I was really terrified of what they would do because their track record has been rape and pillage. I'm just astonished at how well they've done." --James Gosling, Father of Java Crab Lovers Unite! [6ffba403-the-best-oven-roasted-dungeness-crab-recipe-40-1-663x1024] Gosling once told me that he liked to work with people he would enjoy having dinner with (in fact, he says he once chose a job that way). I used to have a habit of making sure I visited Thanh Long, a restaurant that specializes in roasted Dungeness crab, anytime I traveled to San Francisco. I typically visited on my way out of town just prior to heading to the airport. One night, I was sitting at the bar enjoying some delicious crab (I'm from Maryland!) with my carry-on beside me, and James Gosling walks out of the back of the restaurant. I greeted him and turned to ask a member of the ownership family if he knew who that was. I excitedly said, "That's the guy that created the most popular computer programming language in the world!" The guy simply shrugged and said: "I guess he likes crab." The sentiment was giving, "Don't you know how many tech heavyweights come through here?!" Gosling and I later had dinner at Thanh Long together, and that's the last thing we said in our recent conversation: let's meet at the spot next time you come out. So, I will break bread and crack crab with the "Father of Java" the next time I'm in San Fran. And even at $80 per crab nowadays, we're gonna talk and laugh and have a good time. TRENDING STORIES YOUTUBE.COM/THENEWSTACK Tech moves fast, don't miss an episode. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stream all our podcasts, interviews, demos, and more. SUBSCRIBE Created with Sketch. [a95bb5bc-i] Darryl K. Taft covers DevOps, software development tools and developer-related issues from his office in the Baltimore area. He has more than 25 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. He has worked... Read more from Darryl K. Taft SHARE THIS STORY TRENDING STORIES AWS, Google and Oracle are sponsors of The New Stack. SHARE THIS STORY TRENDING STORIES TNS DAILY NEWSLETTER Receive a free roundup of the most recent TNS articles in your inbox each day. [ ] SUBSCRIBE The New Stack does not sell your information or share it with unaffiliated third parties. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. ARCHITECTURE Cloud Native Ecosystem Containers Databases Edge Computing Infrastructure as Code Linux Microservices Open Source Networking Storage ENGINEERING AI AI Engineering API Management Backend development Data Frontend Development Large Language Models Security Software Development WebAssembly OPERATIONS AI Operations CI/CD Cloud Services DevOps Kubernetes Observability Operations Platform Engineering CHANNELS Podcasts Ebooks Events Newsletter TNS RSS Feeds THE NEW STACK About / Contact Sponsors Advertise With Us Contributions roadmap.sh Community created roadmaps, articles, resources and journeys for developers to help you choose your path and grow in your career. Frontend Developer Roadmap Backend Developer Roadmap Devops Roadmap (c) The New Stack 2025 Disclosures Terms of Use Advertising Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy Cookie Policy FOLLOW TNS * *