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Groovy JSR: A New Era for Java?

Posted by timothy on from the coffee's-always-been-there dept.

fastdecade writes "Groovy, the open-source scripting language, has been submitted for a Java Specification Request (JSR). And not without strong support from venerable J2EE practitioner/author, Richard Monson-Haefel, who labels this "the beginning of a new era in the Java platform". Groovy can use Java objects easily and compiles to JVM byte code, but it is nonetheless a scripting language at heart and a great companion for the more heavyweight Java programming language. Most JSRs concern new APIs, and this is the first JSR for an alternative language. Imagine a common platform of standardised languages talking to each other ... this looms as a big threat to .Net and a rejuvenation of the Java platform."

5 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Imagine.... by argel · · Score: 4, Informative
    Imagine a common platform of standardised languages talking to each other ...

    You mean like Parrot?

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    -- Argel
  2. Re:Let Me Get This Straight by FFFish · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's even less like Python, because Python has a port named Jython which... you guessed it! provides Python scripting within Java.

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  3. Re:Warning, Obligatory Jython reference ahead by cxvx · · Score: 4, Informative
    Environmental Variables. Java used to have them. But because of the Mac (oS 9 and before, mind younot OSX) it was removed from the language. Instead, we have -D parameters on the command line. Oh Joy. So to run a program with a different config directory than expected I get:

    Actually, as of JDK 1.5, System.getenv() is undeprecated (is that even a word? :). I'm sure that was a first in the java libraries though :)

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    If only I could come up with a good sig ...
  4. Re:Scripting with .NET by iebgener · · Score: 5, Informative

    In Java, you can't unload code/type from the classpath (core classes you had when you started java) but if the class comes from a different classloader (created at runtime), you can do pretty much what you want... if you own the classloader...

    The only limitation is that the class must not be on the classpath (for security reason). This is also how you can have the same class but with different version on the same VM.

    See : http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/ ClassLoader.html

  5. Great but why a JSR by Laz10 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are many other scripting languages for java than groovy.

    Beanshell (Lightweight Java)
    http://www.beanshell.org/

    JavaScript (Rhino)
    http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/

    Python (Jython)
    http://www.jython.org/

    Ryby (JRuby)
    http://jruby.sourceforge.net/

    has all been available for several years without being made a JSR.

    What qualifies groovy to become a JSR instead of them ? Isn't choice good.

    IBM has open sourced a framework called BSF
    http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/
    that allows for integrating scripting languages into java. I could see why THAT would be promoted to a JSR -- not a specific scripting language.

    As the name suggests it looks like groovy is just a couple of guys who have been playing around with tossing "groovy" language features into their homegrown scripting langugage. Cool, interesting but why make it part of the big package ?