In a major development, James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, has left Oracle Corporation.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/04/gosling_leaves_oracle

There are quite a few lessons to be learned here:

• You can invent Java and still be out of a job!
• No language lasts forever.
• Nothing will replace “select *” aka SQL. It has nothing to do with computer science. The foundations of mathematics are built on set theory — unless some other language can be invented on top of set theory that betters SQL.
• Time to go functional/dynamic: The object-oriented era is coming to an end.

Per the grapevine, Gosling is probably looking at the following choices:

1) Join Google.
2) Join IBM.
3) Move to academics (like Bjarne Stroustrup did).

It would indeed be something if he joined Microsoft instead! Don’t think that’s likely though…