David Herron's Blog

Good news, JRuby developers coming to Sun

I've written more than a few blog entries pondering the strategic goodness possible from supporting multiple languages on the Java VM. Just this morning I was saying to myself, who cares what language is at the top of the stack so long as it's on the Java VM! And this afternoon I learn that we're moving to support JRuby development by hiring the JRuby core developers.

The JRuby guys get hired by Sun ... JRuby Steps Into the Sun ... JRuby Love .. and each of those has further links.

Okay, so it may seem a little controversial what I said above. I love the Java language, but I know that Java isn't the be-all-end-all-language-that-serves-everybody. There's obviously lots of other interesting languages out there. So why be steadfast that Java is the one true language? Why not support multiple languages?

In fact for years the Java VM has supported multiple languages. With Java 6 there is new support that explicitly helps a language integrate with the Java VM.

I've discussed before the advantage as I see it. Namely, the language developer can reuse the whole of the Java ecosystem. The language impelementor doesn't have to invent a language interpreter or compiler .. they just use the Java runtime. The community around the language doesn't have to reimplement the world of database access, XML processing, image processing, network I/O, security controls, etc, they can just reuse the features already provided by the Java runtime. win-win-win-win

A good place to start today on multiple languages for the Java VM is the scripting.dev.java.net/ project.

Comments

• wow, I think it was on the Jython mailing lists earlier this year where someone was wondering why Sun wasn't putting any support into dynamic languages. I guess this answers the question! Now you just need to get some Jython developers in and you can pit it against IronPython.

  leouser

  Posted by: leouser on September 07, 2006 at 06:11 PM

• Is this a prelude to the Java Enterprise stack including or integrating with something Rails like? Reading your last post ofn Java vs PHP makes me think this may be the gameplan.

  Posted by: c_armstrong on September 08, 2006 at 09:39 AM

• My interest in scripting languages and PHP is merely my interest. There is strategic interest in the organization to do more to support other languages running on the VM. That has been announced and discussed in several places by several people. I am very much in support of that idea, and am simply looking at things related to it.

  A long time ago in a world very far away I wrote a BASIC interpreter as an assignment in a university class ... it used YACC to parse the language, and I constructed a parse tree then spat out code in an intermediate that was similar to FORTH. So really it was a BASIC compiler, and the interpreter underneath was for a virtual language whose design borrowed heavily from FORTH. I since did some work on TCL, and later had an opportunity to study the source for Microsoft's JSCRIPT/VB interpreter that was embedded in internet explorer (v3) and the similar one embedded in Visual Test.

  Meaning, I have some background with scripting languages, and some understanding of what it takes to implement one. The Java VM offers a lot to an implementer of a language.

  Posted by: robogeek on September 08, 2006 at 10:47 AM

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