Slashdot Mirror
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."
Having a glue language to tie together Java objects is definitely cool, as is having the scripting language compile down to bytecode for easy deployment.
.Net because its set of tools has grown a little, but Groovy itself seems to be more a threat to Perl and Python and other scripting languages rather than anything Microsoft is doing (except for WSH, but is anyone really using that?) Having a scripting language that can reach directly into Java bytecode without having to invoke a separate VM is a great improvement over the current methods of running external Java programs.
I guess in some obscene way, one could infer that Java is somehow a threat to
Frankly, to me, it doesn't matter which 'platform' succeeds. Both frameworks exist on many platforms, so whichever wins, we all benefit.
I have been pwned because my
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?
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.
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...
/ ClassLoader.html
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