James Gosling: on the Java road…
Also in 1990 an arcade-style 2D game called OIDS was released on the Apple Macintosh. I developed a real addiction to it and spent many hours going back and forth between writing the java (then oak) compiler/VM and playing oids. There’s something deeply fascinating about gameplaying that unlocks mental logjams. I’m sure that there are many PhD thesis topics here. Needless to say, I was thrilled to find that a new release of oids came out for OS X just recently.
First Bill Joy and now James Gosling . . . . .
Obviously, Solaris is not desktop-friendly enough, if these guys don’t use it. But for them both to using OS X is interesting.
What appeals to them? They could install cygwin and get a commandline on Win32 platforms, or run VMWare to get what they need/want. But instead they use the OS made by the company long decried as making toasters.
I wondered when Java first came out if it was partly an attempt to add a UI to UNIX/Solaris, not as opaque as Classic Mac OS, but in addition to the terminal and X.
I guess this old fortune quote is obsolete now:
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
— Bill Joy 6/21/85