Vincent Brabant's Blog

Javapolis Day 3: Tim Bray

He spoked about Java. But not about the Java Language itself. No. About the Java Virtual Machine.
He explained that dynamic language like Perl, Python could accelerate the development, and also be robust.

Then, he speak about Jython, that is running upon the Java Virtual Machine and could easily be connected with all the current Java APIs.

So, could you imagine the advantage of a dynamic language like Jython or Groovy, having the possibility to use the huge number of java Apis ?

He also showed that responsible of JDK 1.6 (sorry, JDK 6.0) meeted people of Jython and that we will certainly see somes modification in the Byte Code of the JVM to facilitate usage of dynamic language as Jython.

He finished his keynote by showing the new recently version of NetBeans 4.0 and encourage people to download it and play with it.

I can also encourage you to look at it.

What do you think about support of other language on the JVM ?
Do you agree that somes modifications are necessary in the Byte Code to facilitate support of other language ?
Please tell me your thinking

Comments

• I really like dynamic language... Groovy is my prefered one right now. I like the fact that is it closely related to Java. It's easy to learn and it's a pleasure to use.

  I don't know if bytecode modification are necessary... But a standard way to closely integrate dynamic language with Java code would be nice. I don't want to have to write 2-3 lines of code before being able to instanciate a Groovy class in a Java class. I just want to call new MyGroovyClass() to instanciate a class written in groovy (or in Jython or in...) . This would requires changes to the java compiler, and probably requires changes to the system classloader.

  However, this would allow for a "natural" integration between Java code and dynamic language code.
  

  Posted by: epirsch on December 16, 2004 at 05:30 AM

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