Java's Future: Is There a Future Without Gosling?

[brad jones]

"Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good" - Gosling



Those are the words of James Gosling who left Oracle and thus left Java on April 2nd. Oracle without Gosling is like C# without Anders Hejlsberg. This is not good news if you are using Java.

For more on what Gosling had to say, check out the InternetNews blog, Oracle Loses Java Creator James Gosling.

It seems he didn't leave for another job, which seems to say a lot too.

While Java could easily survive and thrive under Oracle's ownership, it would have a much better chance of continuing forward successfully if it retained those that have driven it to where it is today. If there were Vegas odds for the future success of Java, I believe they would have recently gotten worse.

What do you think? Does this hurt Java's future?





More...

[RhinoBull]

I don't think it's the dead end - look at other languages like C++ (Bjarne Stroustrup), BASIC (John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz), etc...
Their fathers are either long gone or no longer involved however influence that those langauges had on the entire industry was so significant they [languages] got better over time and/or triggered new improved flavors of themselves...
I don't think anything would happend to C# if Anders decides to leave so Java will survive without Gosling.
There are many extraordinary tallents that can take any of these languages to the next level.

-- my opinion anyway --

[JuggaloBrotha]

I think Java will continue on, with any luck the next major person will take the current version of Java (has 1.7 been released yet? or is it still 1.6 that's current) and actually ditch all the depreciated crap and give the syntax viable meaning again. Sometime, I hope they release a Java 2.0 and bring it up into the modern age.

[DeanMc]

I suppose it really should be the merit of the language and not the visionary that determines if a project holds up or not. But as RB pointed out sooner or later Gosling would not be around be it through him leaving or death. It's sad to see but I hope it doesn't effect the development of Java too much.

[ntg]

I think that Java, or any language, can live on without its original creator. The troubling part about Java's future is Gosling's parting statement about doing more harm than good. His blog is riddled with comments of readers indicating that Oracle and the core Java people do not appear to be a very compatible match so far.