Joshua Bloch

Joshua J. Bloch

Bloch in 2008
Born August 28, 1961
Southampton, New York
Alma mater Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University
Occupation Chief Java Architect at Google, Inc.
Spouse(s) Cynthia Bloch
Children

Matthew Bloch

Timothy Bloch

Joshua J. Bloch (born August 28, 1961) is a software engineer and a technology author, formerly employed at Sun Microsystems and Google. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java Collections Framework, the java.math package, and the assert mechanism.[1] He is the author of the programming guide Effective Java (2001), which won the 2001 Jolt Award,[2] and is a co-author of two other Java books, Java Puzzlers (2005) and Java Concurrency In Practice (2006).

Bloch holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.[1] His 1990 thesis was titled A Practical Approach to Replication of Abstract Data Objects[3] and was nominated for the ACM Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award.[4]

Bloch has worked as a Senior Systems Designer at Transarc, and later as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. In June 2004 he left Sun and became Chief Java Architect at Google.[5] On August 3, 2012, Bloch announced that he would be leaving Google.[6]

In December 2004, Java Developer's Journal included Bloch in its list of the "Top 40 Software People in the World".[7]

Bloch has proposed the extension of the Java programming language with two features: Concise Instance Creation Expressions (CICE) (coproposed with Bob Lee and Doug Lea) and Automatic Resource Management (ARM) blocks. The combination of CICE and ARM formed one of the three early proposals for adding support for closures to Java.[8] ARM blocks were added to the language in JDK7.[9]

Effective Java

Bloch's book Effective Java gives numerous tips on how to use Java effectively. Bloch mentions a huge number of terms and ideas, and typically defines and explains them, such as:

  • raw type => "the name of the generic type used without any accompanying actual type parameters"
  • unchecked warning
  • generic method
  • bounded wildcard
  • class hierarchy
  • tagged class
  • member class
  • member interface
  • method signature
  • inheritance and subclassing

Bibliography

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "About the Author", Effective Java Programming Language Guide
  2. 2001 Jolt & Productivity Award Winners. Dr. Dobb's Portal.
  3. A Practical Approach to Replication of Abstract Data Objects. Computer Science Department, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. May 1990.
  4. Books & Authors: Effective Java, accessed 16 April 2008
  5. Heiss, Janice J. Rock Star Josh Bloch Java Sun.com.
  6. Joshua Bloch, After eight years at Google, the time has come for me to move on
  7. Geelan, Jeremy (2004-12-21). "The i-Technology Right Stuff". Java Developer's Journal.
  8. Klaus Kreft and Angelika Langer, "Understanding the closures debate: Does Java need closures? Three proposals compared", JavaWorld, 17 June 2008
  9. Darcy, Joseph D. (28 August 2009). "Project Coin: The Final Five (Or So)". Joseph D. Darcy's Oracle Weblog. Oracle. Retrieved 6 May 2014.

External links