Groovy JSR: A New Era for Java?

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."

Comments

*blink* hey this is COOL

[Anonymous Coward]

As a hardcore Ruby lover, I've been unhappy that I can't use Ruby with the vast libraries available for Perl and other established libraries.

But this groovy thing looks like a really nice smalltalk-esque language that hooks right into Java, enough to satisfy both sides of my brain.

This is cool and I can benefit from this *right now* in my work. Forget Parrot or Perl 666 (heh).

How come I never heard of this? And why doesn't jpackage have it?

Re:Let Me Get This Straight

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like Python,

Except it's actually elegant, based on Smalltalk, not whatever the heck Python is inspired by.

And Python reference counting stinks, I just spent weeks debugging a C extension that keeps killing a Python-based server.

I use Python, but I sure don't think there's anything "great" about it, at least not enough to explain why it seems *every* language discussion includes somebody who thinks Python is god's gift to computer science.

Python came along at a time when people where starting to use Perl for bigger projects and realizing that Perl is really BAD for big projects. Momentum took over from there.

Re:Let Me Get This Straight

[angel'o'sphere]

But it works well enough, and it sure is a lot more practical than running a JVM just to execute Groovy.

I like to point out that running Groovy in a JVM means: you want to script java code.

I also do not really see the difference between running a PVM or a JVM (python virtual machine versus java virtual machine).

But: I know that Java Byte Code is Hot Spot compiled to machine code. A groovy script running in a JVM scripting Java classes or classes of other languages (like SmallTalk or Lisp or Prolog or Eiffel or Ada or: Python) is java byte code, isnt it? So it is compiled to machine code during runtime.

Goovy is an excellent language. And in case it gains momentum like one has written here, there is no doubt that people will port it to Parrot and the Python VM just like Python is ported to the JVM.

angel'o'sphere