Lew Tucker is Javaman. I've watched as he handled thousands of companies as Java's third-party evangelist. If the intensity of "Internet time" is a test of character, Lew passed the test.

THE SEARCHER
(Brewster Kahle)

The Evangelist

"When you talk about executable content, you face the following problem: how does the provider know what system the content is going to be viewed on? Today, software is system-dependent. Java is designed to be architecture-independent and run on almost all platforms. Application writers who write to the Java platform don't have to worry about the fact that the user is on a Windows system, a Unix system, or a VCR. Instead, from the developer's point of view, Java allows one to write to a single standard software platform, the Java Virtual Machine."

"I'm lost," she said, with an accent worthy of the best of Fellini. "What am I to do? Live in a small apartment in Cambridge, spend my life programming parallel-processing computers?" "Of course not. So what's the problem?," I replied." "Oh, there is this boy at Thinking Machines. I don't know, I just don't know,"she said softly. "Princess," I said incredulously, "are you out of your mind? Get rid of him. Get on with your life. Go back to Milan. You weren't born to live in Geeksville."

LEW TUCKER, trained as a biologist, is the former director of Advanced Development at Thinking Machines Corporation and is the director of JavaSoft's Corporate and ISV Relations for Sun Microsystems, Inc.