We take it for granted these days

because so many technologies have a

mascot and uh I think

the very first mascot uh for a

technology was Java. You know, we all

think of Java as the cup and steam or

the coffee cup with the steam represents

the uh the programming language, but uh

Duke, as we affectionately call the

mascot, uh is representing the Java

community. Duke uh was born from one of

the first devices

uh that Sun created to really showcase

what Java can do and that was the

StarSeven.

>> One of the concepts we had was, you

know, to try to make this thing seem

friendly. So, instead of having like

flashing alerts and you know, blue

screen of death things, we had this

this fun little cartoon character.

>> Duke was an an important way, uh very

friendly, warm and fuzzy way of

introducing this very powerful, you

know, complex technology and making it

clear

how revolutionary this was.

>> The community embraced Duke as as the

mascot to represent the ecosystem and

the community and a lot of people when

they first saw Duke, even myself, wasn't

sure what to make of it. At first I

thought it was a tooth. A lot of people

got confused by that, too.

>> People made sculptures of him. I mean,

this is this is a bronze

sculpture on a limestone plinth.

And it's like

somebody really overachieved in making

this guy.

>> Um this is the Duke puppet and the Duke

Beanie Baby. I started collecting Duke

paraphernalia. I have quite a bit of it.

It had to be rendered in a very small

number of pixels, so couldn't have a lot

of detail.

>> It's great to have this mascot because I

think it just inspired other

technologies to to follow a similar

format.