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by Jason English
It all started with a blunt letter.
In 1990, Sun Microsystems software engineer Patrick
Naughton was fed up with trying to support the hundreds of
different combinations of software APIs used within the
company. When he told CEO and friend Scott McNealy of
his plans to accept a job offer from NeXT, McNealy didn't
take the news sitting down. He asked Naughton to create a
list of his complaints and to suggest a solution "as if you were
God."
When Naughton created his list, he didn't pull any punches
about Sun's shortcomings. Naughton said the NeWS
software architecture the company was working on should
be scrapped, and he suggested that of the more than one
hundred people working in the Window Systems Group at
that time, most of them wouldn't be needed if Sun
straightened out the technical mess. After Naughton sent
the letter to McNealy, he figured it would be ignored. "Why
should I care?" he asked himself. "I'm leaving anyway."
Much to Naughton's surprise, the letter did make a
difference. Quietly, it was e-mailed to many of Sun's top
software engineers. Naughton's e-mail box was flooded with
messages from colleagues who agreed with his assessment of
the company's situation. Bill Joy, a Sun founder, and James
Gosling, Naughton's mentor at Sun, supported his views and
added fuel to the fire by raising many of the same concerns
to other senior executives.
The day Naughton was to leave for NeXT, Sun made him a
counter offer. The company would create a team of top
software developers and free them to do whatever they
wanted. The only expected deliverable: make something
cool.
The team of six, codenamed Green, went into a
self-imposed exile, very much like the scientists on the
Manhattan Project. The team stocked the refrigerator with
Cokes and Dove bars; discussed what they liked and didn't
like about the technologies that were out on the market; and
took apart countless electronic devices, such as Nintendo
Game Boys, TV set-top boxes and remote controls.
The reason for this free-form exploration of Nintendos and
other consumer electronic devices was to find a way for the
appliances to talk to each other. The team discovered early
on that electronic devices such as VCR's, laser disc players,
and stereos were all made with different CPU's. Thus if a
manufacturer wanted to add functions or features to a TV
or VCR, they were stuck because they were limited by what
the hardware and its wired-in programming would allow
them to do. This, coupled with the fact that the chips used by
many of these devices were limited in program space,
suggested a fresh approach to software programming that
might be a key to enabling innovation in this product space.
The team's efforts kicked off the development of a new
object-oriented programming language that Gosling called
Oak, after the tree outside his window. Loosely based on
C++, the language was stripped down to a bare minimum in
order to be compatible with the limited space the chips in
handheld devices would offer, and was designed to allow
programmers to more easily support dynamic, changeable
hardware.
As work on Oak continued, the Green team
conducted extensive research into how and why
people were attracted to certain video games
and how they interacted with various kinds of
electronic equipment. After collecting their research data,
the team developed a handheld, remote-control-like device
with a tiny visual interface. The device, dubbed "*7",
featured an animated character named "Duke" who helped
guide users through the easy-to-use, image rich, graphical
interface remote control. Central to the design of the *7 was
the conviction that the interface must be engaging and fun
to use, and that the device itself must be a small, personal
artifact. "Duke," created by Joe Palrang, would go on to
become Java's mascot.
Sun turned the Green team into a wholly owned company
called First Person. The new Operating Company had an
interesting concept but still no idea what to do with it. After
struggling to come up with a marketable idea, the company
decided to pursue the interactive television market that
seemed to be emerging.
A deal with Time-Warner to create set-top boxes fell
through at the last minute. Another potential deal with
3DO was scrapped when that company's chief executive
wanted exclusive rights to the technology. Thus First
Person's foray into creating set-top boxes for
video-on-demand fizzled.
The company's fortune's changed in 1993 when the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
introduced Mosaic, and the World Wide Web was born.
More web technology soon followed, and the Internet,
formerly a home only to computer scientists and educators,
began to bustle with traffic.
In early 1994 the First Person team recommended focusing
its limited resources on a software system for online
multimedia. Bill Joy took that initiative further by
positioning Oak as a "language based operating system" and
took up Naughton's suggestion to give it away in source form
on the Internet. The Oak language itself became the
product, instead of part of a device. Arthur van Hoff wrote
an Oak compiler entirely in Oak instead of in C. Naughton
and Jonathan Payne built an Oak-ready browser called
"WebRunner." The first applet -- Duke waving back at his
parents over the Internet -- was born.
Sun backed the decision to give the language away, but not
before renaming it Java. Much has been made of the now
famous name but consider the fact that it could have been
called Neon, Lyric, Pepper or Silk.
With Java in the hands of the Internet community at large,
all that was needed was a way to run Java applets.
"WebRunner" was renamed the HotJava browser because of
a trademark conflict. Then, Netscape began supporting
Java. Now millions are Java-ready, and Duke has never
looked back.
So what exactly is Java?
It is commonly thought of as a way to make Web pages sexy
-- incorporating stock tickers, sound or video into Web
pages. It has evolved into much more. It is becoming known
as a computing platform -- the base upon which software
developers can build applications. Developers can build a
variety of applications using Java -- traditional
spreadsheets and word processors in addition to mission
critical applications used by the biggest companies:
accounting, asset management, databases, human resources
and sales.
Java applications, or applets, are different from ordinary
applications in that they reside on the network in
centralized servers. The network delivers the applet to your
system when you request them. For example, let's say that
you want to check your personal financial portfolio. You'd
dial in to your financial institution and use your Web
browser to log into the bank's system. The portfolio data will
be shipped to you along with the applet needed to view it.
Let's assume that you're considering moving your money
from one account to another. No need to perform a series of
cut-and-paste exercises. The system will also send you an
applet that will allow you to change the rate of interest and
length of investment to perform a series of "what-if"
scenarios.
From the corporations' point-of-view, Java will simplify
the creation and deployment of applications thus saving
money. Applications created in Java can be deployed
without modification to any computing platform, thus
saving the costs associated with developing software for
multiple platforms. And because the applications are stored
on centralized servers, there is no longer a need to have
people insert disks or ship CD's to update software.
So what will the future hold for companies and their use of
Java? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain -- it's
unlikely that letters such as the one written by Patrick
Naughton complaining about multiple and incompatible
software APIs will ever need to be sent again. |