Chances are, everything you know about Java technology
is only a few years old. There's a good reason for that: On May 23, 1998 the
technology officially celebrated its third birthday.
As part of the celebration, we interviewed several members
of the Java technology team who have been around since the early days, and
we put together this retrospective to share with the readers of java.sun.com.
Join us on a stroll through history.
by Jon Byous
On May 23, 1995, John Gage, director of the Science Office for Sun
Microsystems, and Marc Andreessen, cofounder and executive vice president
at Netscape, stepped onto a stage and announced to the SunWorldTM audience that JavaTM
technology was real, it was official, and it was going to be incorporated
into Netscape NavigatorTM, the world's portal
to the Internet.
At that time, the entire Java technology team, not yet a division,
numbered less than 30 people. It was the original members of this small group
who created and nurtured a technology that would change the computing world.
The Set-Top TV You Never Saw
Java technology was created as a programming tool in a small,
closed-door project initiated by Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, and James
Gosling of Sun in 1991. But creating a new language wasn't even the point
of "the Green Project."
The secret "Green Team," fully staffed at 13 people, was chartered
by Sun to anticipate and plan for the "next wave" in computing. Their initial
conclusion was that at least one significant trend would be the convergence
of digitally controlled consumer devices and computers.
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This is a snapshot taken at a barbecue that James
Gosling threw for some of the folks associated with the Green Team. From
left to right they are: Al Frazier, Joe Palrang, Mike Sheridan, Ed Frank,
Don Jackson, Faye Baxter, Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, James Gosling,
Bob Weisblatt, David Lavallee, and Jon Payne. Missing in action: Cindy Long,
Chuck Clanton, Sheueling Chang, and Craig Forrest. |
To demonstrate what they saw as a possible future in digital devices,
the Green Team locked themselves away in an anonymous office on Sand Hill
Road in Menlo Park, cut all regular communications with Sun, and worked around
the clock for 18 months. In the summer of 1992, they emerged with a working
demo, an interactive, handheld home-entertainment device controller with an
animated touchscreen user interface.
In the demo, the now familiar Java technology mascot, Duke, was
shown waving and doing cartwheels on the screen. The device was called *7
("StarSeven"), named after an "answer your phone from any extension" feature
of the phone system in the Green Team office. Duke was actually a representation
of the *7's "agent", a software entity that did tasks on behalf of the user.
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The original *7 device |
A *7 display, showing one experimental user interface.
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The reason *7 was able to control a wide range of entertainment
platforms and appliances -- while displaying animation -- is that it ran
on an entirely new, processor-independent language. The language itself was
created by Green Team member James Gosling specifically for *7. Gosling called
the new language "Oak," after the tree outside his window. As the project
gained momentum and started involving potential customers in the cable television
industry, the Green team came out from hiding, occupied a large, attractive
office building at 100 Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto, and came to be known
as FirstPerson.
Who Was Who
(Listed alphabetically)
Lisa Friendly -- FirstPerson
employee, original member of the Java Products Group
John Gage
-- Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems
James Gosling
-- Green Team original, FirstPerson employee, original member Java Products
Group, lead engineer and key architect of Java technology
Bill Joy
-- Cofounder and vice president, Sun Microsystems, Inc., principal designer
of the University of California, Berkeley, version of the UNIX® operating system
Jonni Kanerva
-- Original Java Products Group employee, author of The Java FAQ1
Tim Lindholm
-- FirstPerson employee, original member Java Products Group
Scott McNealy
-- chairman, president, and CEO of Sun Microsystems
Patrick Naughton
-- Green Team member, FirstPerson cofounder
George Paolini
-- Director of corporate marketing, Sun's Java Software Division
Kim Polese
-- FirstPerson product marketing/P>
Lisa Poulson
-- Original director of public relations for Java technology (Burson-Marsteller)
Wayne Rosing
-- FirstPerson president
Eric Schmidt
-- Former Sun Microsystems chief technical officer
Mike Sheridan
-- Green Team member
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The FirstPerson team was trying to find a market for a *7-type of device,
and the TV set-top box and video-on-demand industries seemed to make the
most sense. The team developed a new demo called MovieWood to demonstrate
the underlying technology to that market. Unfortunately, those industries
were in their infancy and still trying to settle on viable business models.
Welcome to the Internet, You Have Customers
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James Gosling |
"Back when we were FirstPerson, the Java technology-related stuff we were
doing was built around networking, in very much an Internet style," says James
Gosling. "We were pitching the cable companies on the idea that this is
what your network should look like. It was interactive, and users could read
and write information into the system. But the companies didn't want to lose
that much control." It was too far ahead of its time, and the team, now numbering
70 people, was still searching for a target market.
"After we realized that there wasn't a business in digital cable
television, we had a group meeting at The Inn at Squaw Creek near Lake Tahoe.
We had to figure out what to do with this technology, or what to do with our
lives." There, over the course of three days, John Gage, James Gosling, Bill
Joy, Patrick Naughton, Wayne Rosing, and Eric Schmidt had a group epiphany:
why not the Internet?"
The newly popular Internet was exactly the type of network configuration
that the FirstPerson team had envisioned for the cable TV industry.
The Internet was becoming popular as a way of moving media content
-- text, graphics, video -- throughout a network of heterogeneous devices
using HTML. Java technology had been designed in parallel to move media
content across networks of heterogeneous devices, but it also offered the
capability to move "behavior" in the form of applets along with the content.
HTML alone could not do that, but it did set the stage for Java technology.
Gosling explains: "We had already been developing the kind of `underwear'
to make content available at the same time the Web was being developed. Even
though the Web had been around for 20 years or so, with FTP and telnet, it
was difficult to use. Then Mosaic came out in 1993 as an easy-to-use front
end to the Web, and that revolutionized people's perceptions. The Internet
was being transformed into exactly the network that we had been trying to
convince the cable companies they ought to be building. All the stuff we had
wanted to do, in generalities, fit perfectly with the way applications were
written, delivered, and used on the Internet. It was just an incredible accident.
And it was patently obvious that the Internet and Java were a match made
in heaven. So that's what we did."
Build a Better Browser
The team returned to work up a Java technology-based clone of Mosaic
they named "WebRunner" (after the movie Blade Runner), later to
become officially known as the HotJavaTM
browser. It was 1994. Daily, momentum behind the new vision grew. WebRunner
was just a demo, but an impressive one: It brought to life, for the first
time, animated, moving objects and dynamic executable content inside a Web
browser. That had never been done.
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WebRunner flyer:
click to enlarge. |
Two Demos That Changed the World
One day early in 1995, John Gage, director of Sun's Science Office,
stuck his head in Gosling's office and said, "James, I need some cable, do
you have any?" Gosling grabbed some from the team's stockpile. "Now, I need
a couple of desktop systems. Can I borrow these?" No problem. Gosling offered
to help carry them down to the car, asking along the way, "John, what are
you doing with these systems?"
Gage answered that he was headed to the Technology, Entertainment
and Design Conference over the hill in Monterey. He had been invited to give
a talk at this exclusive "Hollywood-meets-Silicon-Valley" gathering of Internet
and entertainment professionals. He had downloaded WebRunner and was going
to demonstrate it to the audience. Gosling, horrified at the prospect of the
still-rough WebRunner crashing in a major public demonstration, jumped in
Gage's Volvo full of gear and rode along as his "demo dolly."
Gosling spent the next 30 hours setting up a network link and troubleshooting
the demo. As the talk began, Gosling noticed that many people were only
casually paying attention. After all, what was so exciting about a new language
driving a page of text and illustrations in a clone of Mosaic?
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A commercial applet, similar to the 3D molecule
applet that Gosling debuted. Click, hold, and drag your mouse over the image
to rotate the molecule.
[Credit: Cherwell Scientific]
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Then Gosling moved the mouse over an illustration of a 3D molecule
in the middle of the text. The 3D molecule rotated with the mouse movement.
Back and forth, up and around. "The entire audience went `Aaaaaaah!'" says
Gosling. "Their view of reality had completely changed because it MOVED."
Now everyone was paying close attention.
Next, Gosling and Gage pushed the audience over the edge with an
animated line-sorting algorithm that Gosling had written.
In each of three sets of horizontal lines of random lengths, the
demo sorted the collection by size, from shortest to longest, by actually
moving them up and down in the browser. The audience had never seen anything
but static images in a browser before this: The lines were moving, as if being
sorted by unseen hands!
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One example from the three sorting applets that
Gosling demonstrated using WebRunner. Click image to begin.
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Suddenly, everyone in the room was rethinking the potential of
the Internet. Far from the crash-and-burn scenario Gosling had first envisioned,
his demo had jolted a very influential audience off their seats, and they
were delivering enthusiastic applause. And within this technology-entertainment
crowd, word would spread quickly.
One month later, the team was ready to make WebRunner and the binary
code available over the Internet in a "private/public" download. They wanted
the code to be tested by their friends and a small, informal network of
developers.
They promoted the release via e-mail, which was cheap and quick.
"We were just a little lab group that was flinging this thing over the wall,"
says Gosling.
Going Public
By March 1995, there were still only seven or eight binary copies
of what they called "1.0a" outside of Sun. The team was getting ready to post
a "full public" alpha version ("1.0a2") of the Java source code on the Internet.
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Lisa Friendly |
"We released the source code over the Internet in the belief that the developers
would decide for themselves," said Lisa Friendly. The team knew that releasing
code to developers for free is one of the fastest ways to create widespread
adoption. It's also a great way to enlist the help of the development community
to inspect code and find any overlooked bugs.
So the team set up an Internet address and, with their hearts
pounding, they pushed ENTER, sending the Java source code through the net
and out into the world.
At first, the team all jumped for joy when someone would download
the release. "Seven downloads! Look, somebody in Australia is downloading
now, and we don't even know who it is--that's eight!" Nine. Ten. Soon dozens.
Now, word was getting out over the net and feedback was coming back in from
developers.
In just a few months, the downloads began to surge into the thousands.
The team had to reset their vision of success.
Gosling says, "I had to pick a number that represented success
for Java. I said, OK, if we reached 10,000 downloads of this first release
-- 10,000 people kicking the tires -- we would be a total, blow-the-doors-off
success."
Download 10,000 didn't take as long as anyone expected, not even
James. And, along with that milestone, the spiraling volume of email inquiries
and continuous downloads was beginning to tax the team's Internet connection.
They constantly needed more bandwidth to satisfy the market's interest.
The Java technology team had taken proud note of each day's downloads
and crafted comprehensive answers to practically all e-mail questions. "Developers
would receive two-page technical answers to their problems the next day,"
said Lisa Friendly. "At first it was maybe 20 e-mails a day."
Friendly continued: "Sometimes, in their enthusiasm to help a developer
with a technical question, two or three team members were answering the same
e-mail. So we decided that each week, one team member would have the job
of answering all incoming emails." At first, it was a manageable solution
as a temporary task added to their regular work. But by the time each team
member had taken a one-week turn at answering e-mails, the task had become
a full-time, week-long job for whomever's turn it was.
Team member Tim Lindholm was running the Java technology-related
mailing lists and was regularly receiving over 2000 emails a day. "I was
getting tons of mail because I was co-webmaster and ran the mailing lists,
which had tens of thousands of people subscribing to them." If he left for
any reason for more than a couple of days, he would return to see from six
to eight thousand e-mails on his system.
Gosling set up an interactive system that automatically sent a
polite return e-mail for each one received. Finally, the full-time job of
support went to team member Jonni Kanerva, a linguist and software developer
himself. He later published his e-mail responses to developers in the book,
The Java FAQ."1
The hours were long, just coping with code development. Then came
the e-mails and constant system upgrades -- across each of the technology's
multiple platforms, of course. Then came the press, the interviews, the
promotional requirements, and the speaking engagements. Then Sun would call
and ask if James could go to China the following week.
"We were workaholics, complete nutcase maniacs." said Lindholm.
"Still, many of us tend to create scenarios that let us work like dogs, because
that's how we want our lives to be. It's irritating when someone says to
back off, take a break, and don't work so hard."
For the original players on this team, "working hard" doesn't begin
to describe their days and nights.
The New Bandwidth Hogs of Sun
Even though the team had a shared T1 line and an official java.sun.com
address, the bandwidth wasn't enough for the growing Java software market's
demands. Developer complaints about not being able to download the code started
coming in frequently. Some even accused the team of purposely withholding
the now in-demand code. "We had simply saturated the line," says Gosling.
Soon Sun realized that the Java technology team's popularity was
quickly and haphazardly outpacing its own carefully orchestrated popularity,
with virtually no marketing budget or plan. The undeniable proof was in the
Web hits. And then it happened.
Black and White, and Read All Over
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San Jose Mercury News,
March 23, 1995
Click to enlarge |
Lisa Friendly told the story: "It was Wednesday, March 22, 1995, and Lisa
Poulson had arranged for the San Jose Mercury News to write a story on Java
technology based on our upcoming official announcement. We all wore lots of
hats back then. In addition to working on some developer and end-user docs,
I was responsible for designing the new Web site, java.sun.com. Lisa Poulson
or Kim Polese had come by my office to tell me that we needed to have something
linked with www.sun.com by Sunday when the article would run.
Friendly continues: "I thought, no problem. This gives me four
days to get it ready. Weekends were just additional workdays back then. In
Internet time that was a lifetime. I had leisurely started to put it together
on Wednesday while working on my other projects. Then on Thursday morning
at 7:30, I went to the driveway to pick up the paper and saw the front page
of the Mercury. There it was. Uh-oh. Better get to the office in a hurry."
Not only was the story supposed to run on Sunday, but it was expected
to run in the business section, not the top half of the Mercury's front page.
Friendly recalls: "I rushed into the office and worked as fast as I could.
But people kept calling and knocking on my door to ask if I knew the story
had run with a URL for which there were no Web pages! You know the term `Positive
Stress'? I was focused and energized, but at the same time I thought I
was going to become physically sick at my keyboard." The Web site was up
and running in a couple of hours.
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First Home Page for
java.sun.com:
Click to enlarge. |
The front-page story clearly positioned the new, soon-to-be-announced
Java technology as The Next Big Thing. It even included a quote from Netscape's
Marc Andreessen, giving the nod to Java technology as "great stuff." The
PR team had done its job, but the newspaper took the publicity beyond all
expectations. It brought an immediate swarm of calls and inquiries from
the press.
The rest of the world, the non-programmers, were suddenly taking
notice, and almost overnight, the Java technology team was sitting at the
table with the grown-ups.
Sorry to Steal the Show, Dad
Imagine the scene: The public announcement of Java technology has
been scheduled as a part of the keynote speech at the SunWorld show kick-off.
The announcement would have a brief, but exclusive, place in the Sun spotlight.
Other than that, Java technology didn't have much of a role to play in this
well-established UNIX® showcase for
UNIX customers.
But then an unexpected turn of events occurs.
It is about 4 a.m. in a Sheraton Palace hotel room down the street
from the convention center. Sun's Eric Schmidt and George Paolini are shaking
hands with Netscape's Marc Andreessen on an agreement to integrate Java technology
into the omnipresent, omnipotent Navigator browser. It had been a long session
of tough words and big numbers, but in the end, Andreessen agreed to step
out on stage during the morning's keynote speech and reveal the surprise agreement
as part of the Java technology announcement.
Most of the Java team didn't know the agreement has taken place
until the moment Andreessen and the Sun execs walk on stage. The air was
electric throughout the room. The prospect of Navigator being able to open
these new, mysterious, and simple Java technology-based applets on any Web
page from any platform was unbelievable news to this audience. Andreessen
was on stage for less than three minutes, and once again, an influential
audience of technologists and the press is pounding out excited applause,
knowing they are witnessing the beginnings of something very big for the
future of the Internet.
Epilogue
A lot of synergistic things have happened in Internet and enterprise
technology in the last few years, and these are just the beginning: JDK,
the sandbox, applets, thousands of Java technology-oriented startups, over
a thousand books on Java technology, JavaBeans architecture, Java Studio,
Netscape Communicator, thousands of Internet service providers, 60 million
Internet users, 56K and cable modems, electronic commerce, servlets, Java
Foundation Classes, Enterprise JavaBeansTM
components, JavaOS for BusinessTM, and commitments
from major players such as IBM.
More than merely a series of software products and events, the list
above is an indication of how fast this technology has grown in the last several
years. Java technology is a major computing environment now, a river that
has flooded its banks and is now coursing just about everywhere across industries
and the enterprise.
In the months that followed the original SunWorld announcement,
Sun's stock price soared, partially attributable to Java technology. By the
end of Java technology's first full year, the JavaSoft division had signed
38 licensees and attracted 6000 developers to its own trade show, the first
JavaOne Developer Conference. By the end of the second year, JavaSoft had
signed nearly 100 licensees and the JavaOne conference had attracted 10,000
developers.
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James and Duke |
At the celebration of Java technology's third birthday, the renamed Sun
Java Software Division employed 800 people, supported over 150 licensees and
many hundreds of thousands developers worldwide. It has hosted 15,000 JavaOne
attendees (the world's largest gathering of programmers ever), regularly matched
its former yearly goal of 10,000 JDK downloads in a single day, and boasted
a very busy T3 line of its own, with backups.
Since its introduction in May 1995, the Java platform has been adopted
more quickly across the industry than any other new technology in computing
history. All major computing platform vendors have signed up to integrate
Java technology as a core component of their products. What got the Java
platform from there to here appears to have been sheer momentum. As Lisa
Friendly said, "The developers really made all this happen. It wasn't the
hype."
"The Java platform is dwarfing any other API or programming environment
out there," Sun CEO Scott McNealy told an audience at a industry gathering.
"Java has become the language, and the platform, and the architecture for
computing on the network."
Press Accounts of the Birth of Java Technology
1 The Java FAQ, Jonni Kanerva,
Addison-Wesley, 1997. For more information on this book, see
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/faq/.
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