Java icon goes clean-shaven

A paradigm has shifted.

James Gosling

James Gosling, the Sun Microsystems programmer widely described as the father of Java, no longer has his beard, a classic of the computer guru genre. "Neither my wife nor my kids had ever seen me without a beard," he said on his blog.

For those of you beginning to feel as panicky and adrift as when ponytailed Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz warned he got a bad haircut, take a deep breath. Gosling said on his blog--where we found this photo--that he'll grow the beard back.

John Fowler

It was only a temporary move because of some surgery. And there's no evidence to suggest Gosling has forsaken his jeans-and-T-shirt outfits.

Presumably, the alarmingly spiky hair of John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president of servers, was equally temporary, reverting to its more subdued tufty state when Halloween finished up and the vampire outfit shown in this photo from Fowler was retired.