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James Gosling Appointed to the Order of Canada 191

Andrija Ifkovic writes "James Gosling, the creator of Java language and a VP of Sun has been appointed to the Order of Canada. 'The Order of Canada recognizes outstanding lifetime achievement and contributions to society and the country by Canadians from all walks of life.' This is the highest honor Canada can bestow upon its citizens."
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James Gosling Appointed to the Order of Canada

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  • by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:20PM (#18101146) Homepage Journal

    Why is James Gosling is receiving the OoC?
    I was just looking through the Java source and it says "// Author: Joyce Hatto"

  • by whisper_jeff ( 680366 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:20PM (#18101156)
    Highest honor? Bah! Stanley Cup tickets are the highest honor that can be bestoyed upon any real Canadian.
  • Can you blame them?
    • ``Can you blame them?''

      I wouldn't put is as strongly as "blame", but I think Java is only a mediocre programming language. It sure did a lot of good for the world, but it also continues to hold back certain advancements, not to mention soak up a lot of time and energy (in development, research, press coverage, discussions) that could (IMO) be spent better elsewhere.

      If we're going to hand out awards for people for having worked on programming languages, I would rather suggest Guy Steele [wikipedia.org], who has contributed
      • by WGR ( 32993 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @08:30PM (#18103436) Journal

        There are several Canadians who have also developed programming languages of greater significance the Java, which is a derivative of C/C++ so not completely original.

        Ken Iverson, who created the APL language, was a Canadian. He was giving the ACM Turing award for this, but never received the Order of Canada.

        Tim Bray, one of the main developers of XML, is also a Canadian.

        Rob Pike, developer of Plan9 and Inferno, and creator of many Unix utilities, is also Canadian

        Brian Kernighan, co=developer of AWK and co-author of "The C Programming Language" book is also Canadian.

        There are even more.
        • Do you think any politician on Earth would even know what those things are, let alone who developed them? James Gosling, by contrast, is a somewhat public figure with money. Politicians dig fame and money, they crave them the way Vampires crave blood. And James Gosling is one of the few public figures (with money) that's actually done something even vaguely positive and is even vagely Canadian.

          So: to be noticed by Canadian politicians, a software development figure would need to be a) rich, b) famous,

  • by RumGunner ( 457733 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:22PM (#18101196) Homepage
    Look everybody, Canada is a country too! They have awards and everything!
  • Congrats (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FreeKill ( 1020271 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:23PM (#18101218) Homepage
    While the Order of Canada is indeed prestigious to Canadian citizens, it's sometimes hard to take it 100% seriously as a huge honor when Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) also received the same reward for their "contributions to Canadian Culture"
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by delirium28 ( 641609 )
      Take off, eh! You hoser! Bob and Doug rock, and Strange Brew was one of the best cult films in Canadian history.
    • Re:Congrats (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:30PM (#18101300)
      While the Order of Canada is indeed prestigious to Canadian citizens, it's sometimes hard to take it 100% seriously as a huge honor when Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) also received the same reward for their "contributions to Canadian Culture"

      Why don't you first strip Mick Jagger of his knighthood and then we'll talk about taking things seriously.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jack Action ( 761544 )

        Or giving Louis L'Amour the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

      • Why don't you first strip Mick Jagger of his knighthood and then we'll talk about taking things seriously.

        Are you kidding? Mick deserves his knighthood more than most, I mean the guy is what... 63 years old and he still gets more action than the entire slashdot membership combined.

        In my opinion, the big question is why we don't have 'Sir Ozzy Osbourne' yet! The guy is a national treasure.
    • Re:Congrats (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:50PM (#18101598) Journal

      Yeah, because comedy can't possibly contribute anything to a culture, ya hoser.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Not really... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by StressGuy ( 472374 )
      They are entertainers...and the characters are pretty funny. I don't think that, just because thier characters are buffoons means they are less talented or deserving.

      Case in point: I don't think anyone would question the talents of Peter Sellers, yet Inspector Clueso is far more of a buffoon then either of the two.
    • by gvc ( 167165 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @08:02PM (#18103136)
      Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis do not appear on and list of Members, Officers, or Companions of the Order of Canada [wikipedia.org].

      Here's an independent confirmation [canadianshakespeares.ca]: Although it has been written in various places that Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas received the Order of Canada for their contribution to Canadian culture, a phone call to Rideau Hall revealed that they were not members of the Order of Canada.

    • Hey, Canadians are pretty serious about their comedy. We like a good laugh. It helps to keep us from spending our time thinking of news ways to make life miserable for each other, or from sitting around convincing ourselves that terrorists are sure to come and try to blow up our little hick town's beloved Wal-Mart. Farce, ironically enough, keeps people grounded in reality.
  • by joe90 ( 48497 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:25PM (#18101240) Homepage
    So now we get to blame Canada for Java too? Woohoo! Is there nothing they are not at fault for?
  • Not as bad as the Bitkeeper guy, nor probably even the CDDB guy, but still--grrr...
  • Freedom Medal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by javamann ( 410973 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @05:53PM (#18101656)
    As opposed to our 'Freedom Medal' which you get if you really fu*k up badly.
  • The list of Order of Canada recipients -- 87 in all, including three Companions, 29 Officers and 55 Members -- was submitted to Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and approved on Oct. 5, 2006.

    Yep, I've been watching too much Firefly.

  • As subjects of the Queen, couldn't he also be knighted?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dadragon ( 177695 )
      As subjects of the Queen, couldn't he also be knighted?

      Legally, yes, but the Queen (in right of Canada) doesn't do that anymore unless the CANADIAN government allows it. It's been against government policy since the 40s.
    • He would have to give up his Canadian citizenship to have British peerage bestowed upon him. Only one person comes to mind who has done that, Conrad Black, who now wants his citizenship back supposedly.

      Gosling will be able to use the letters OC, CC or CM after his name however.
    • Realistically speaking, we're only marginally more subject to the Queen's authority than Americans are.

      And Americans probably dig the British Monarchy quite a bit more than Canadians do. One of the benefits of a couple of a divorce is that you can go back for a quick fling, and it's all good. Time and distance heal all wounds. But when you're still in the separation period, that kind of thing just doesn't fly.

  • For Java? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paulrothrock ( 685079 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @06:48PM (#18102308) Homepage Journal

    As someone who spent the better part of a day trying to get Eclipse, Swing, Tomcat, and the JDK set up, I think he should have had the medal pinned to his scrotum.

    • Re:For Java? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @07:00PM (#18102448)
      When was this? Java has been a download, 'double-click, click "next" a few times to install' affair for years. At most you might need to add the path to the bin directory to your path (it's been so long since I installed Java on a fresh machine that I forget).

      Swing doesn't take any "setting up", it's a core API.

      Tomcat runs pretty-much out of the box, although porting web-apps to it from other servlet containers can be problematic (especially if you foolishly use container-specific extensions).

      Eclipse can be troublesome in that the website doesn't make it entirely clear what it is you should be downloading. As long as you get it right, however (and it's not really that hard, certainly much easier than it used to be) then you just extract it and double-click the executable to run it.

      Now I'll grant that perhaps you might have trouble integrating Eclipse and Tomcat (as I've never tried it I can't comment), and you'd certainly have trouble trying to use Swing in a web-app, but without more detail I really can't see where on Earth you could be going wrong.

      • I made a mistake, it wasn't "Swing" it was "Spring." The homonyms got crossed in my brain.

        And I'm still pulling out my hair trying to get a project from our CVS repository to run in Tomcat through Eclipse.

    • by Ranger ( 1783 )
      I think he should have had the medal pinned to his scrotum.

      As Dr. Evil said, "There's nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking I suggest you try it."
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Blame IBM for Eclipse, not Gosling...

      As for the JDK, sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk should cover it.

  • Personally, I'm just glad that this helps to clarify the species.

    Java was, apparently, invented by an immature Canada Goose, as opposed the the Greylag variety that we see more of around here..

    • This just in:

      Environment Canada just released the results of a study that show that the Canada Goose does NOT, in fact, migrate south in the winter and back north in the summer.

      Seems they're just following the old folks that feed them .....
  • by Ranger ( 1783 )
    Does that make him a Canada Gosling as well as a Canadian Gosling?

    Canada also seems to have a problem with chasing beavers [youtube.com].
  • by isomeme ( 177414 ) <cdberry@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @07:40PM (#18102930) Journal
    Rather than giving Gosling the order of Canada, wouldn't it be better form for Gosling and Canada to extend a common implementation of Comparable?
  • You don't just get "appointed to" or "awarded" the Order of Canada. You are named one of the following, from lowest to highest:
    • Member of the Order of Canada
    • Officer of the Order of Canada
    • Companion of the Order of Canada
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Canada [wikipedia.org]
  • Great (Score:3, Funny)

    by bytesex ( 112972 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @04:29AM (#18106300) Homepage
    So now it's called 'Janada', or something.
  • Yep, him and my Dad (Score:3, Informative)

    by ashitaka ( 27544 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @01:48PM (#18110764) Homepage
    Dr. Dennis Smith [utoronto.ca].

    Most people who have had hip replacements have benefited from my Dad's work. Including Dad himself.

    We're so proud!
  • Whose fault is Java? Blame Canada!

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