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James Gosling, inventor of Java

James speaking in the CoE Annual Lecture

An audience comprising staff, students, local schools, colleges and industry.

James with Professor Simon Thompson, instigator of the Kent IT Clinic

James meeting with Center of Excellence organisers Michael Kölling and Ian Utting.

Published 16 March 2007
by Maggie Bowman

James Gosling, the inventor of the Java programming language and one of the most influential figures in the history of programming languages, visited the University of Kent on Friday 16 March. During his visit, James, who is currently a Vice-President and Fellow at Sun Microsystems (based in California), met with staff and students from the Computing Laboratory and IT Clinic. He also gave the Sun Center of Excellence(CoE) Annual Lecture.

Ian Utting, Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Kent and an expert on Java programming, met with James. He said:

" James' visit is significant for many reasons, not least among them the fact that he has always been interested in the teaching of programming. It is also a great honour to have someone of his reputation and standing visit the Computing Laboratory. After all, he is the inventor of the language which has enabled software development for everything from smart chip-and-pin cards through games for mobile phones up to the infrastructure that drives business on the web." "

The CoE Annual Lecture was delivered as a question and answer session and James was inundated with questions covering both technical and non-technical areas such as:

• Where did he get his inspiration for Java?
• What are the challenges for Java in the next five years?
• How was the name Java chosen?
• Are there paradigms other than Object Orientation which interest you?
• How will open sourcing Java affect its future?
• Will we still be teaching Java in ten years time?
• With hindsight, what would you have done differently with Java?

James spoke to Computing staff and students as well as to an invited audience from local schools, colleges and industry.

James also toured the department and met with Sun Center of Excellence staff led by Michael Kölling and Ian Utting. The department was appointed the Sun Center of Excellence for Object Oriented Programming by Sun Microsystems in 2006. This was in recognition of its excellence in developing educational programming tools, pedagogical methods and teaching material to support the teaching of object-oriented programming at all levels.

Dr Michael Kölling, Senior Lecturer in Computing and a co-ordinator at the Sun Center of Excellence at the University said:

" James Gosling is undoubtedly one of the most influential software developers in the area of programming languages in the recent past. He is a very popular speaker and this has been a great opportunity for our students and other guests at his presentation to listen to and ask questions directly of one of the icons in the field. "

After lunching with representatives from the Computing Laboratory research groups, he visited the Kent IT Clinic, which provides the opportunity for Kent computing undergraduates to gain practical experience as IT consultants.

Prof. Simon Thompson, the head of the Compting Lab, commented:

" James's visit to the department is the latest in a series of links between the Computing Lab at Kent and Sun Microsystems. Over a hundred ouf our students have been able to spend a year on placement with Sun over the last years, most spending their year in California or Colorado in the USA. We also have strong research links with Sun, particularly in memory management. "