During the conversation, he asked his friend how he could spend his life studying things that hardly ever happen. The physicist replied that there are enough subatomic particles in the cubic meter of air in front of his head that very rare things are happening all the time. As an illustration, he pointed to the early phone system, in which every call required an operator's involvement. Imagine how many operators you'd need now if that were still true, he noted. Further, if people can be eliminated from the loop, then names for devices aren't important.
Programs are bad at understanding language, but they are very good at recognizing types.
Waldo recounted that the Jini's roots lay in a research project that initially rejected Java's predecessor, Oak, because of its lack of stability. However, the team eventually reconsidered and decided to switch to Oak. They needed strong object support so they could distinguish between what happens and how it happens. That way, the what can stay constant while the howchanges. Moreover, the team liked that Oak supported dynamic class loading, object code porting, code verification, and polymorphism.