Cangenuity- Programming language JAVA owes much to the Doobie Brothers

Dateline: 1991

The flashbulb moment for revolutionary Calgarian programmer James Gosling came at of all places, a Doobie Brothers concert.

He had front row seats and was staring at a dazzling array of dancing lights while listening to the music. In his mind the lights embodied the networking computer platform his Sun Microsystems team was theorizing, originally called Oak, after a tree that stood within eyeshot of his office. The network computing software allows programmers to create software that will work on any operating system. When the software was released to the public in 1995 as JAVA, it immediately joined the ranks of other extraordinary hi-tech hits of that annum such as Windows 95 and Netscape Navigator. Today it is virtually ubiquitous to internet applications like viewing 3D images and chatting to online gaming, not to mention intranet applications that power corporate computing. The versatile platform powers everything from set top boxes and mobile phones to car navigation systems. Sun Microsystems became so synonymous with their utilitarian programming language that in 2007 they even changed their Nasdaq ticker from SUNW to JAVA.

This story first ran as part of a larger story in Chill Magazine

Follow Me on Twitter

Copyright © Mike Dojc 2009

Back To Top