James Gosling Discusses Java’s Role at AWS and Lessons from Decades of Engineering

James Gosling, the Canadian computer scientist who originally designed Java and built its first compiler and virtual machine, is widely recognized as the "father of Java".

Gosling now works as an engineer at AWS and delivered a keynote at the online reClojure 2022 conference in early December, where he shared decades of experience in the tech industry that eventually led him to the cloud computing field, covering topics ranging from the evolution of programming languages to why projects fail.

He explained the importance of Java to AWS, noting that many core AWS services are implemented in Java and that the company maintains a large team of Java engineers focused on performance, especially a sizable group dedicated to optimizing garbage collection (GC) performance.

While appreciating Clojure’s emphasis on functional programming, Gosling revealed a personal quirk: his preference for functional programming leads him to favor recursion over arrays, a style that some colleagues find unconventional, as illustrated by a teammate’s comment that his coding style seemed "crazy".

When asked why many research experiments never translate into real-world usage, Gosling pointed out that engineers often struggle to explain their work; he recalled early Java days when his wife urged him to communicate Java’s benefits to business leaders, prompting him to write multiple scenarios for different companies to illustrate Java’s value.

Gosling also shared his views on the current state of Java, expressing satisfaction with the work of Brian Getz and Oracle, who are leading Java’s ongoing development.

Related link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynu9QEJSGX8