James Gosling: A True Computer Geek

Nowadays, if someone were to ask you who Steve Jobs or who Bill Gates was, high chances are you would have a lot to say about it. However, there are a lot of influential people in the field of computer engineering and computer science that you may not be aware of. And James Gosling is no exception. No, he’s not related to the famous actor Ryan Gosling but they do share the same last name.

James Gosling was born on May 19, 1955 in Calgary, Canada and is specifically known as the father of the Java programming language. Java is a  “general purpose computer programming language that is concurrent, class based, and object oriented” and it’s designed so that java code can be written out on a platform but does not have to compile if you wish to use the same code on another platform. It is also known as a “high-level” language due to its ease of understanding. Instead of programmers using numeric codes this language allows you to use English based commands thus making it easy for virtually anyone to understand and use.

Around the age of twenty-two, Gosling received a BSc in computer science and was quickly on his way to getting his doctorate. To finish his academic career, in 1983 he received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Melton University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A few of his early achievements consisted of creating the original version of the Emacs text editor, also knows as Gosmacs, which was designed for the Unix operating system. Not to mention, he built several compilers, mail systems and even a multi processor version of Unix.

In 1984, Gosling’s life changed when he decided to join Sun Microsystems, where it wasn’t long when he was promoted to be chief technology officer for the developer product group. Six years later in 1990 he was appointed to lead a project that was code named Green, which eventually became what we all know to be Java. The purpose of the project Green was to develop software that would be able to run on different computer devices and networks without having to be specifically customized for a specific computer. Green aimed to create software that was easy to use and was highly efficient.  After a lot of hard work Sun Microsystems finally launched Java in 1995. Gosling worked on the original design of Java and implemented the original compiler and virtual machine when Java launched. This being one of his major achievements, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.

Although Java claimed to be a  “write once, run anywhere” programming language, the success it has had is because Java has created a strong and reusable code that con run on different devices such as computers, tablets and even mobile phones.

In an article from computer weekly it states “Gosling realized that some of the underlying principles they had created would be very useful in the Internet age” and boy was he right.