Top 8 Java People You Should Know

Here are the top 8 Java people, they’re created frameworks, products, tools or books that contributed to the Java community, and changed the way of coding Java.
P.S The order is based on my personal priority.

8. Tomcat & Ant Founder

James Duncan Davidson, while he was software engineer at Sun Microsystems (1997–2001), created Tomcat Java-based web server, still widely use in most of the Java web projects, and also Ant build tool, which uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, which is still the de facto standard for building Java-based Web applications.
Related Links

1. James Duncan Davidson Twitter
2. James Duncan Davidson Wiki
3. James Duncan Davidson personal blog
4. Apache Ant
5. Apache Tomcat

7. Test Driven Development & JUnit Founder

Kent Beck, creator of the Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development software development methodologies. Furthermore, he and Erich Gamma created JUnit, a simple testing framework, which turn into the de facto standard for testing Java-based Web applications. The combine of JUnit and Test Driven Development makes a big changed on the way of coding Java, which causes many Java developers are not willing to follow it.
Related Links

1. Kent Beck Twitter
2. Kent Beck Wiki
3. Kent Beck Blog
4. JUnit Testing Framework
5. Extreme Programming Wiki
6. Test Driven Development Wiki

News & Interviews

1. Kent Beck: “We thought we were just programming on an airplane”
2. Interview with Kent Beck and Martin Fowler
3. eXtreme Programming An interview with Kent Beck

Kent Beck Books

1. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition)
2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
3. JUnit Pocket Guide

6. Java Collections Framework

Joshua Bloch, led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including JDK 5.0 language enhancements and the award-winning Java Collections Framework. In June 2004 he left Sun and became Chief Java Architect at Google. Furthermore, he won the prestigious Jolt Award from Software Development Magazine for his book, “Effective Java”, which is arguably a must read Java’s book.
Related Links

1. Joshua Bloch Twitter
2. Joshua Bloch Wiki

News & Interviews

1. Effective Java: An Interview with Joshua Bloch
2. Rock Star Josh Bloch

Joshua Bloch Books

1. Effective Java (2nd Edition)
2. Java Concurrency in Practice

5. JBoss Founder

Marc Fleury, who founded JBoss in 2001, an open-source Java application server, arguably the de facto standard for deploying Java-based Web applications. Later he sold the JBoss to RedHat, and joined RedHat to continue support on the JBoss development. On 9 February 2007, he decided to leave Red Hat to pursue other personal interests, such as teaching, research in biology, music and his family.
Related Links

1. Marc Fleury Wiki
2. Marc Fleury Blog
3. JBoss Application Server

News & Interviews

1. Could Red Hat lose JBoss founder?
2. JBoss founder Marc Fleury leaves Red Hat, now what?
3. JBoss’s Marc Fleury on SOA, ESB and OSS
4. Resurrecting Marc Fleury

4. Struts Founder

Craig Mcclanahan, creator of Struts, a popular open source MVC framework for building Java-based web applications, which is arguably that every Java developer know how to code Struts. With the huge success of Struts in early day, it’s widely implemented in every single of the old Java web application project.
Related Links

1. Craig Mcclanahan Wiki
2. Craig Mcclanahan Blog
3. Apache Struts

News & Interviews

1. Interview with Craig McClanahan
2. Struts Or JSF?

3. Spring Founder

Rod Johnson, is the founder of the Spring Framework, an open source application framework for Java, Creator of Spring, CEO at SpringSource. Furthermore, Rod’s best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (2002) was one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE.
Related Links

1. Rod Johnson Twitter
2. Rod Johnson Blog
3. SpringSource
4. Spring Framework Wiki

News & Interviews

1. VMware.com : VMware to acquire SpringSource
2. Rod Johnson : VMware to acquire SpringSource
3. Interview with Rod Johnson – CEO – Interface21
4. Q&A with Rod Johnson over Spring’s maintenance policy changes
5. Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development: Interview with Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson Books

1. Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (Programmer to Programmer)
2. Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB

2. Hibernate Founder

Gavin King, is the founder of the Hibernate project, a popular object/relational persistence solution for Java, and the creator of Seam, an application framework for Java EE 5. Furthermore, he contributed heavily to the design of EJB 3.0 and JPA.
Related Links

1. Gavin King Blog
2. Hibernate Wiki
3. Hibernate Framework
4. JBoss seam

News & Interviews

1. Tech Chat: Gavin King on Contexts and Dependency Injection, Weld, Java EE 6
2. JPT : The Interview: Gavin King, Hibernate
3. JavaFree : Interview with Gavin King, founder of Hibernate
4. Seam in Depth with Gavin King

Gavin King Books

1. Java Persistence with Hibernate
2. Hibernate in Action (In Action series)

1. Father of the Java programming language

James Gosling, generally credited as the inventor of the Java programming language in 1994. He created the original design of Java and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. For this achievement he was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering. On April 2, 2010, he left Sun Microsystems which had recently been acquired by the Oracle Corporation. Regarding why he left, Gosling wrote on his blog that “Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.”
Related Links

1. James Gosling Blog
2. James Gosling Wiki

News & Interviews

1. Interview with Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup, and James Gosling
2. Interview: James Gosling, ‘the Father of Java’
3. Developer Interview: James Gosling

Note
Please feel free to share your personal opinion