Interview
James Gosling: Java, JVM, Emacs, and the Early Days of Computing | Lex Fridman Podcast #126
- Expects to appear multiple times in the podcast and anticipates a future where people overcome fear to take leaps of faith, noting that young individuals should risk making "stupid things" once or twice to earn a pass.
- Predicts that companies maintaining high-profit business models face difficulty "leaping the chasm," with public firms under quarterly reporting pressure unable to absorb the "one, two, three quarters" of big hits required for transition.
- Foresees the film industry suffering a "collapse in their business" as digital camera quality lines cross film performance, contrasting this with Tesla and Amazon's ability to ignore stock markets during their early "huge hits."
- Believes that transitions often involve significant losses and that open source can build communities but becomes problematic when treated as a religion or forced closed due to bureaucracy that may hurt the product.
- Notes that many in the open source movement have found viable revenue paths through service and support, while corporations depending on software require support contracts to meet accounting and reporting standards.
- Anticipates Java running on "millions" of devices and potentially "billions of devices," whereas Android avoided cross-lines by not utilizing Java, a decision James Gosling argues would have been cheaper.
- Describes the challenges of coroutines on multi-core machines as preventing core usage or necessitating complex synchronization with "semaphores and locks," and recalls a 1985 or 1986 summer job prior to returning to CMU.
- Observes that successful tech figures often possess difficult personalities like Steve Jobs who is described as a "jerk" yet inspires best work, expressing concern that this behavior has become a required style for high-flying successes in Silicon Valley.
- Identifies "working smart, not hard" as a "recipe for disaster," maintains that "most things come about through a little bit of explosive" innovation, and cites ethical choices as a lifelong consideration.
- Expresses a hope for a universe resembling "Star Trek" rather than "Blade Runner," while naming "Skynet" as his least favorite AI system and acknowledging the difficulty of "making choices" as a core life challenge.
- Reflects on the financial opportunity lost by not pursuing the "Mr. Emacs" trajectory, which would have resulted in being "fabulously wealthy," and notes that early Tesla operations under Elon were driven by a strong vision.