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Java: The inside story

We interview Java's creators to find what they had in mind

By Michael O'Connell

Abstract

Poised to fill World Wide Web browsers everywhere with animation, audio, and real-time interactivity, Sun's Java language has survived an odyssey through consumer electronics, PDAs, set-top boxes, and CD-ROMs. While some of these areas may yet be exploited by the language formerly known as Oak, the Internet is Java's launch pad. How'd it get there, and what's its destiny? Will it successfully cross over into the (gasp!) non-Unix marketplace?
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Note: This article was published in July 1995

ne would think that a key component in any business's current strategy for success would have been deliberately created based upon a clearly defined mission. But in the case of Sun Microsystems Inc.'sJava programming language -- the environment that turns static Web pages into interactive, dynamic, animated documents bolstered by distributed, platform-independent applications -- it seems the solution preceded the problem.

As Java creator James Gosling explained in a recent interview withSunWorld Online, the genesis of Sun's Web-enhancing technologycan be traced to early 1991, when a small group of Sun engineers formedto explore opportunities in theconsumerelectronics market. At the time, the World Wide Web was still inthe drawing rooms.

"We were trying to build a distributed system that would make sense as a business [product] ... to sell modern software technology to consumer electronics" manufacturers, Gosling says.

Gosling, 40, joined Sun in 1984 (coming from IBM'sresearch division) and soon afterward began work on the technically impressive but commercially unsuccessful NeWS windowing system. He also wrote GOSMACS, the first EMACS text editor implementation in C.

During this consumer electronics effort, eventually referred to as the "Green" project,Gosling and fellow project engineers learned a great deal about the value of qualities such as reliability, cost, standards, and simplicity -- top priorities in the consumer marketplace. (See thetimeline sidebar for additional details.) In contrast to workstation users, who typically want lots of power and will tolerate (and sometimes seemingly demand) high prices, steep learning curves and various bugs in exchange, consumers demand low-cost, bug-free and relatively simple, easy-to-use products.

"Consumers don't care which CPU is inside," says Gosling. They don't appreciate big or powerful RISC-based processors, which are "expensive and proprietary." To compete in the consumer electronics market, companies "treat CPUs as commodities" that can be swapped for lower-cost alternatives nearly instantaneously, and invest resources into backward compatibility and adherence to established standards in long-lived machines, such as toasters and televisions.

Gosling notes that just as modern toasters with embedded electronics employ the same basic user interface as his mother's 42 year-old toaster (which "still works just fine"), so must other consumer electronics products. Television followed a similar path of backward-compatibility when color broadcasts began (today's TV signals can be viewed on 1950s-era black-and-white sets), and faces its next challenge in making the move from analog to digital signals.

To make development a more platform-neutral process (and thus accommodate the consumer market's demand for CPU flexibility), Gosling began by extending the C++ compiler. Eventually, however, he realized that even with lots of extras, C++ would not suffice. Thus, Oak was conceived in mid-1991. (The name came to Gosling when, while creating a directory for the new language, he glanced out his window, and spotted a tree. But the name didn't survive a trademark search, and was dropped in favor of Java.)

"All along, the language was a tool, not the end," Gosling says. "This was nice in a number of ways. The goal was never 'Let's take on C++,' [but] to build a system that would let us do a large, distributed, heterogeneous network of consumer electronic devices all talking to each other."

In the fall of 1992, after what then-project engineer Patrick Naughton characterizes as "massive amounts of hacking on Oak, the Green OS, the UI, [and the] hardware," among other things, the Green project delivered "*7" (as in the star on a telephone keypad), the PDA-like device that Gosling calls a "handheld remote control."

"In 18 months, we did the equivalent of what 75-people organizations at Sun took three years to do," boasts Naughton -- "an operating system, a language, a toolkit, an interface, a new hardware platform, three custom chips...using new risky technology at every turn. We pulled out all our teeth and put them in each others' mouths."

Naughton, 30, was the project lead on Sun's OpenWindows user environment before joining the secret Green team.

The *7's small form factor helped emphasize the small size and efficiency of the code, which was the core technology. The product was demonstrated around Sun and impressed important people like Scott McNealy and Bill Joy, but the next step was uncertain.

papers and moving on with life...")

While the team was working on Oak and *7, team members Ed Frank (hardware/technology) and Mike Sheridan (business planning) wrote business and technology road maps for a company in the mold of Dolby Labs that would create and license technology and get its logo alongside Dolby's on consumer electronics products. They had finished several versions of the plans by the time of the *7 demo. But in early 1993, as Sun weighed Java's options, the Green team (now incorporated as FirstPerson Inc.) got wind of a request for proposal from Time-Warner for a set-top box operating system and video-on-demand technology. "A perfect fit," recalls Gosling.

FirstPerson quickly zeroed in on the set-top box OS market, andplaced a bid with Time-Warner. But despite having been told that theyhad the best technology, Sun did not win the bid, due to what Goslingand Naughton characterize as wholly non-technical reasons, such asbusiness politics. "[SGI's Jim] Clark sold his sword to get the deal,"Naughton says.

FirstPerson kept trying to pursue set-top boxes until early 1994,when it concluded that "the market wasn't real," Gosling says. "A lotof people hyped things beyond reason." Apparently, the interactive TVmarket still isn't ripe. Two recent examples: An interactive cable TVtrial of 50,000 homes in Omaha, NE put together by U.S. West (network),3DO (set-top boxes), and DEC (video servers) was cancelled thisspring after two years; and Viacom just stopped work on its full-scaletest in the San Francisco bay area -- to refocus on applying itsmiles of cable TV lines to a tried and true market: telephone service.

Naughton says he waged an eventually successful campaign to stop pursuingset-top boxes and instead focus on online services, CD-ROMs, anddesktop platforms. FirstPerson dissolved, and about half of its staffmoved to Sun Interactive to develop digital video data servers. But afew people still pursued applying Java's technology to network-baseddesktop systems.

By mid-1994, the World Wide Web was big. "We realized we could build a really cool browser," says Gosling. "It was one of the few things in the client/server mainstream that needed some of the weird things we'd done: architecture-neutral, real-time, reliable, secure -- issues that weren't terribly important in the workstation world. So we built a browser."

By early fall, Naughton and fellow Sun engineer Jonathan Paynefinished writing WebRunner, a Web browser written using the Javalanguage. This early incarnation of HotJava showed off Java in a newlight, and a demo impressed SunLabs director Bert Sutherland and EricSchmidt, Sun chief technology officer -- no doubt in part because theycould envision Sun reaping rewards.

"The browser equals something that creates a market" for tools, servers, development environments, Gosling says. And Java plays a key role in those tools. "In the pre-Java world, you look at the WWW world, and a page is essentially a piece of paper. In the Java world, a browser becomes a framework. Content providers are empowered to describe behavior and data formats and everything."

More generically, Gosling envisions Java will make people rethink what client/server computing is about. "In the standard model, you have some databases, write a bunch of clients that interact with the database, and build some front end." In this model it can be difficult to organize multiple systems and maintain upgrades, especially when they come from different places, Gosling says.

With Java and Web tools, in contrast, you have inherent organization, Gosling says. "If you build the client side of an application in Java, then launching a client app becomes just switching to a page. Installing is trivial -- just put it on a Web server. And there are no ports, just one version of the application." Already, Gosling says, lots of companies organize databases as Web pages using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) -- the specified standard for running external programs under an HTTP server.

At this point, Gosling says the Java language is fairly solid, and he doesn't see any major changes, just some fleshing out. It's the browser that needs work, and that's where the team's efforts are largely concentrated. Gosling says it should be complete by the end of summer. What then? "We've been building a tool, now we'd like to use it," says Gosling -- to build some commercial products, including Web authoring tools.

And none too soon. After the browser, "Sun's biggest challenge is authoring tools" to help develop content, says Dwain Aidala, VP and general manager of Mitsubishi Electronics' North American Multimedia Business Center.

Aidala, whose company has been working with the Java technology in embedded systems for the last two years, says Sun also should make Java a bit lighter and expand its potential applications beyond the Internet and the Web. "Java is limited primarily by how small they can make the interpreter," Aidala says. "It has the potential to go anywhere there's networked processors. ... Telco, CATV, closed systems ... all in the future."

Indeed, Sun acknowledges its efforts to employ Java technology in interactive televisions/set-top boxes, handheld devices, PDAs, telephones, VCRs -- even light switches. "The Internet is the first platform, the perfect way" to introduce Java, says Kim Polese, senior product manager of Java and HotJava.

Still, Java has a ways to go. Of the 713 people who filled outSunWorld Online surveys at its June prototype Web site, only 13 people(1.8 percent) use HotJava -- currently the only choice for takingadvantage of Javaapplets -- as their primary browser. NetscapeCommunications' agreement to license Java technology means a Java-aware version of the Netscape Navigator browser could appear around theend of the year; with the number-one browser up to speed, Java willbecome a common component in the broader Web community.

Sun insists it has no direct competition. Although nobody isadvertising an equal technology, languages such as Kaleida Labs' ScriptX andLingo(Macromedia Director's animation scripting language) have come up inthe same breath as Java. And General Magic offers somewhat similartechnology, itsTelescript messaging and agent-based system. But as Poleseexplains, Telescript differs greatly from Java.

Instead of the server sending information based on client requests,the servers sends things when theserver deems appropriate, socode comes to clients without clients asking for it. This raisessecurity questions, Polese says. Since Telescript is aimed at phonenetworks and PDAs, not desktops, the security issues may not apply.

When one considers the applications of the technology, ever-presentMicrosoft enters the ring. Beyond the typical browser companies orservice providers, and beyond Microsoft's monolithic force and loomingMicrosoft Network, Microsoft has Visual Basic. While this languagelacks the portability of Java, it can run on any Windows-based PC. Andwhile VB applications may never be as light as the heaviest Javaapplet, they are downloadable. "VBA [Visual Basic for Applications, abuilt-in programming language for MS applications that replaces oldermacro languages and provides a unified programming interface to theoutside world] is interpreted, extensible and downloadable," saysHotJava co-author Patrick Naughton.

"Visual Basic can and will do what Java does," says Naughton, who isnow the vice president of technology at Starwave Corp. (Starwave isMicrosoft co-founder Paul Allen's Seattle-based interactive consumerproducts and services company and maker of the popular ESPNETSportsZone Web site, among others.) "Visual Basic already has 30million users." Who cares about cross-platform issues when you own thePC market?

"Visual Basic makes up for its inferiority as a programming languagefor serious object oriented design by having a easy to use, visualapplication construction tool which is already in use by a massivedeveloper community."

"The only thing it doesn't have that matters is security. That'sits Achilles' heel -- it's gonna kill 'em." Still, Naughton adds, "PCviruses have been around for 15 years" and haven't prevented thedominance of Windows and DOS. "The issue is that today's viruses havebeen spread by the rather slow method of floppy disks and downloadsfrom BBSes. Once MSN [the Microsoft Network, due to launch August 24]has people downloading VBA chunks of code as a matter of course, thevirus threat is more tangible." In an environment that downloads thingsfor a living, security takes on paramount importance.

In addition to Visual Basic, Microsoft hopes to deliver a tightintegration of online network-based services with CD-ROMs. This wouldallow things like Encarta CD-based encyclopedias to be kept current viasupplements seamlessly added via the online network.

"I think this is what Microsoft Network is going to be," says MarkWinther, VP of worldwide telecommunication at IDC's Link ResourcesCorp., a New York City-based market research and analysis companyfocusing on the consumer information market. "It doesn't give you live,dynamic, 3-D home pages, but is very powerful and close to what themass market wants."

Despite all its strengths, Microsoft's concern about Java indicatesSun has the upper hand at this point. "Bill [Gates] knows about and asksabout it," says Naughton. "Microsoft sent two guys to pick my brain."

Rather than hoarding the technology, Sun has realized the importance of generating broad product interest and acceptance, and therefore freely offers the binaries -- and even the source code -- of key Java components via the Internet.

Sun plans to license Java technology widely to companies such as Netscape that offer Web browsers, online service providers, and software OEMs to "make the long term more solid," Polese says.

"The basic strategy is to license Java to people who have a need fornetwork-centric applications," says Eric Schmidt, Sun's chieftechnology officer. "The first and obvious target is the browserworld. Nothing in the design of Java limits it to Unix or any otheroperating system. ... It needs to be on all [major] platforms to besuccessful, and we are going to make sure that happens."

Secondly, Sun is working with third parties to build development tools and object libraries, Polese says, noting that some of these tools are designed for nonprogrammers and offer "completely WYSIWYG" interfaces that let Web creators do things such as drag and drop images and other objects into pages.

"There's no reason why layers can't be built on top" of Java,ranging from scripting tools to more sophisticated tools such as RAD Technologies' PowerMediaauthoring tool orDimension X'sanimation tools, Polese says.

"What we would really like to see are new types of applicationsdeveloped using this technology," Schmidt says. "We are trying to avoidthe fate of NeWS [Sun's proprietary windowing environment that lost a standards battle with the X Window System] by working more aggressivelywith everyone in the industry. I think the terms are low enough and thevalue high enough that we have a good chance of having most of themovers and shakers sign up."

Perhaps these combined efforts will cause tomorrow's Internet -- aswell as other networked computer environments -- to overflow withubiquitous Java objects.

"The people [Sun] needs to market Java to are not those reading[programming-relatednewsgroups]," says Naughton, but less sophisticated users. "Ifaverage consumer can see these things and use them, they'll demand it.Naughton says Sun needs to land deals with major commercial playerssuch as America Online and CompuServe.

"The key is not Sun, but how many service providers and publishers use Java on their servers," says IDC/Link Resources' Winther. "I see no reason why an increasing number of new sites won't employ it. ... It's real powerful."

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About the author
Since writing this cover story,Michael O'Connell has launchedJavaWorld (http://www.javaworld.com), IDG's monthly Web-only magazine for Java developers and professionals, where he is editor-in-chief. Previously, he was an editor withSunWorld and a reviews editor withAdvanced Systems magazine.

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