Despite the success of the Java programming language he created, James Gosling hasn't retired to an exotic location, or started up another company.
No, Gosling still reports for work at Sun's Californian research laboratories each day.
"I go in every day, 9 to 5," Gosling said during an interview at Sun's JavaOne conference. "I love to build things. And I came to the realization I didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. I just like to build stuff and people actually pay me."
Since Sun unveiled the Java platform five years ago, the "write once, run anywhere" software has become a popular cross-platform application used by an increasing number of developers and enterprises.
For Gosling, who developed the code while a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, the rise of Java has been a sublime experience.
"I find it amazing that people are doing so many things with Java," he said. "If there is something with a digital circuit in it, someone is charging it and someone is doing it with Java."
Gosling said he now plans to work on the development of more sophisticated Java code for developers. "I want to put together groups to work on high-end developer tools," he said.
He sees continued growth in the popularity of Java, but with mass appeal comes what Gosling calls "the tragedy of the common," the self-limiting scope of Java application development to make it appeal to large markets.
"In some sense, the biggest challenge for Java these days is ... the tension of the different directions people want to take it," he said, referring to the recent fights over reaching consensus for specifications.
Although much of the development of the Java platform has come from the Java Community Process, in which vendors cooperate to develop specifications for the programming language, Gosling said he also is interested in highly specialized code. Such applications may not be suitable for the mass market and that's all right with Gosling. "I'm focusing on a market of one - me," he explained.
Sun, in Palo Alto, can be reached at +1-650-960-1300 or at www.sun.com/
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