Interviews: Ask James Gosling About Java and Ocean Exploring Robots

James Gosling is probably best known for creating the Java programming language while working at Sun Microsystems. Currently, he is the chief software architect at Liquid Robotics. Among other projects, Liquid Robotics makes the Wave Glider, an autonomous, environmentally powered marine robot. James has agreed to take a little time from the oceangoing robots and answer any questions you have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

Re:Death Match

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not a katana in Stallmans hand dummy, its his dick.

Re:Checked vs. Unchecked Exceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaand you *completely* (and deliberately) miss the point.

Yes, a Michael Schumacher can get fast to point B even in a Trabant. That doesn't mean that a better car is not a good idea!

In fact, your logic is stupid, because why deliberately give yourself a idiotic handicap? If you are good without checked exceptions, you are BETTER with them.

I bet you also prefer to write shell scripts in C... no wait, Assember... no wait, a set of morse switches hot-wired to the bus. BECAUSE HAXORZ.

It's not boolean. It's a floating point value. It's not about good and bad. It's about how much it's BETTER.

I want a good developer AND a good language.

And yes, a bad developer *will* in fact write better code with checked exceptions. No, he won't become a good deveoper. Yes, he will abuse the language like you abuse logic. But he'll still be better than with zero assistance.

As I said: Your logic is stupid. I hope you're not a developer.

Your thoughts on the Java Language Environment

[thylordroot]

In 1996, you collaborated with Henry McGilton to write The Java Language Environment [oracle.com], which describes your rationale for the design decisions you've made in creating Java. In this document, you expouse a number of ideas which are (or at least at the time were) controversial, like the "constant-in-class pattern" in favoring enumerations (which later became supported in Java 1.5), the lack of need for structure or union types, the lack of need for unsigned integral types (well, except for char), and the lack of need for operator overloading. Now that 17 years have passed since that document was published, have you changed your stance on any of these decisions?