India, Dec. 10 -- There are technologists who follow industry shifts and there are those who have lived through their defining moments. Gil Tene belongs to the latter group. As Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Azul, and one of the world's most respected Java Virtual Machine performance engineers, he has experienced Java's evolution from its earliest days. He attended the very first JavaOne, watched Netscape announce Java in the browser, and has since seen Java transform from a bold experiment in the mid-1990s to the foundation of global enterprise computing.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Azul Chief Executive Officer Scott Sellers about the company's Java-first mission. This follow-up conversation with Gil explores the engine...