What is Java? History of the Java. Part 2.

If you look at history of creation Java, it turns out that the original language was calledOaK, and work for its establishment began in 1990 with a rather controversial historywithin the corporation Sun. These facts are true, but actually it was more interesting.

Difficulties in Sun Microsystems

Indeed, the events begin to unfold in December 1990, when the rapid development ofWWW (World Wide Web - "World Wide Web"), yet no one could even predict. Then the computer industry was taken over by taking off personal computers. Unfortunately, the company Sun Microsystems, which occupies a significant market share and high-performance servers, stations, according to many employees and independentexperts, could offer nothing of interest to ordinary "PC users" - for their computers from Sun's "too complicated, very ugly and too "dumb" devices. "

Therefore, Scott McNealy, a member of the Board of Directors, President and CEO (chief executive) Corporation Sun, was not surprised when 25-year-old well-established developer Patrick Naughton, having worked for only 3 years old, announced his desire to go to the company NeXT. They were friends, and Patrick explained his decision simply and briefly: "They do everything right." Scott thought for a moment and uttered the historic phrase. He asked Patrick before going to describe what, in his opinion, the Sun is wrong. We had not just talk about the problem, but offer a solution without looking at the existing rules and tradition, as if at his disposal unlimited resources and opportunities.

Patrick Naughton complied with the request. He relentlessly criticized the new software architecture NeWS, over which the firm was working at the time, but also praised the newly announced OS NeXTstep. Naughton suggested involving professional artists, designers, user interfaces to make Sun more attractive, choose one tool of development and focus on one technology, rather than several at once (Naughton was forced to support hundreds of different combinations of technologies, platforms and interfaces used in the company) and finally, to dismiss almost all employees of the Window Systems Group (if you do the above conditions, they will simply not needed.)

Of course, Naughton was certain that his letter be ignored, but still delayed his transfer to NeXT waiting for some response. However, it has surpassed all expectations.

McNeely Naughton sent a letter to all the officers the corporation, and they sent it to their senior staff. Responded to just about anything, and, reputedly, Naughton described what they thought but were afraid to express. Decisive support was Bill Joy (Bill Joy) and James Gosling (James Gosling). Bill Joy - co-founder and vice president of Sun, as well as a project participant to create the UNIX operating system at UC Berkeley. James Gosling came to Sun in 1984 (before that he worked in a research lab IBM) and has been a leading developer and author of the first implementation of the text editor EMACS on C. These men had great authority in the corporation.

In order not to stop there, Naughton decided to offer a completely new project. He teamed up with a group of technical experts, and they stayed until 4:30 in the morning, discussing the basic concepts of such a project. They got only three: the main thing - the consumer, and everything is built entirely in accordance with its interests, a small team to design a small hardware and software platform, the platform needed to bring in a device designed for personal use, convenient and simple to use - ie . a computer for ordinary people. These ideas were enough to John Gage (John Gage), Head of Research Sun, was able to arrange a presentation to senior management of the corporation. Naughton presented the conditions that it considers necessary for the successful development of this enterprise: the team must sit out of the office Sun, so do not feel any resistance revolutionary ideas, the project will be the secret to all but senior management Sun; hardware and software platform may be incompatible with Sun products , for the first year the group needed a million dollars.