Technology

In jeans and t-shirt, clearly jet-lagged but with an amused look on his face, James Gosling took the stage to greet an eager gathering of South African developers at the recent Sun Tech Days conference.

Currently Sun Microsystems` chief technology officer (CTO), Gosling garners respect from the development community as the father of one of technology`s most pervasive platforms. Java is everywhere, from cellular telephones to enterprise servers and, via its virtual machine, runs on any computing platform available. The ease of portability for Java-created applications has led to its overwhelming presence in modern technology. Ease is also a word that describes Gosling. He is a laid back, friendly man whose eyes light up at discussions on the more intricate elements of computer programming.