Java: The legend
Explore the past, present, and future of Java.
(source: O'Reilly)
Preface
My first encounter with Java came as a PhD student in Spring 1998. I had been
earning some extra money by helping a disabled student who couldn’t physically
attend his first year Computer Science classes. I’d learned Dijkstra’s algorithm
and enough graph theory to stay ahead of the class, and at the end of term, he
came to me and asked if I’d sit in on another class for him—some new
programming language called “Java.”
At first I refused, but I eventually relented, and I clearly remember many a late
night sitting by the Physics department printer, waiting for a print-out of some
tutorials and early javadoc so I could read up before the class.
Learn faster. Dig deeper. See farther.
Little did I know that this language and environment would have the impact on my
life and career that it has.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my wife Anna Evans for the illustrations, to Samir Talwar,
Helen Scott, and Gil Tene for technical reviews. To Dalibor Topic for
correcting the timeline of events leading up to the release of
OpenJDK. To the O’Reilly team: Nan Barber, Brian Foster, Heather
Scherer, and Megan Blanchette. Finally to Mike, who was responsible for
getting me into this industry in the first place (if you’re reading
this, please contact O’Reilly, and they’ll reconnect us).