Rick Hightower requests that Sun drop their support for JRuby in place of Groovy. The community has replied in the form of comments and blog posts to agree with and argue against Rick's position. Another battle in the language wars of 2008.
Rick's main point is that Groovy's syntax makes more sense as an evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) step for Java. In that regard, do you think Scala (which strikes me as an advanced language) applies?
When it comes to supporting extra JVM languages, I think Sun should have thrown more support behind BeanShell.
I think that is a good point. However, as much as I love Java, I do think you need a bit of a larger jump than that to get the gains that Scala gives you. Stuff I am sure we will *need* in the near future. One example: Concurrency. We seem to be getting more and more cores-per-CPU these days, and Scala gives you an Erlang-style actor model which, with Scala's functional aspect, gives you very good way of creating thread-safe applications without anything like the amount of pain.
Also, one of the things I like most about Scala is its consistency. This makes it sooo much easier to learn.
I can certainly understand people preferring something over JRuby. But lets be honest, Sun has ^*&^&*)loads of money and only has a couple of developers working on it. I think the real question is how come they're not devoting equal or more to other JVM languages? Including Jython, Scala, and groovy. They dug up a billion bucks for MySQL. All of their Postgres oriented staff will likely soon be out of work (sadly), so they could retool in this direction.
The JRuby guys talk to the Groovy guys and share ideas and technical goodies. So, I think Sun's support of JRuby has been a win-win thing for all interested parties (Groovy devs, Ruby devs, Java devs and Sun); so I applaud Sun's support of JRuby.
Also, Scala is NOT a drop in replacement for JRuby or Groovy. Groovy and JRuby code can be run as scripts (i.e. no compilation phase, although you can compile Groovy). While you can create a Scala script, you can't write an entire library as Scala scripts, you have to compile the code. So Scala is more like a competitor to Java, not JRuby and Groovy.
Sorry, this is old, but yes you can use Scala as a scripting language. Simply "scala MyClass.scala" and it compiles it on the fly then runs it. Scripting with static typing, woohoo!
I'm also confused by Sun's priorities. Why did Sun push Ruby/JRuby instead of Groovy which is more Java-like in syntax and even has a JSR in place? or why not showing more support to Jython which was one of the first popular dynamic language implementations on the JVM? Python and Java also share the same principals of explicit code and community process. Python is also used in Sun itself, but still there is no proper support for it in the new Netbeans platform.
It seems to me that Sun was driven by the hype generated around RoR by some tech world celebrities. It's ironic that with all this hype around Ruby and RoR - in 2007 there was a drop in the popularity of Ruby and a rise in the popularity of Python (see http://www.dzone.com/links/tiobe_declares_python_the_programming_language_of.html).
While I didnt read the article or comments that the article is actually talking about, im going to comment, because im like that. (and the article this discussion is about, is what I did actually read)
1) I do not use jruby (or ruby)
2) I have rarely used groovy
3) I have not used scala, heh, im young, give me time
But anyway.
I feel suns efforts to back a scripting language for the java platform as a way to use the jvm (which is a very advanced and well made platform / vm with hotspot blah blah blah doing great jobs) is somewhat in response to the many languages one runtime situation we see in .net.
Is this a bad thing? Nope, competition drives change, and change is mainly good. Not always, but alas.
So we have sun wanting to support other languages on the vm, how is this a bad thing regardless of what language they have chosen? Yes the ruby hype (and I do understand that ruby is an old language that has recently gained support) with the RoR hype probably had a large factor in their choice. But does this mean that jruby Is a BAD thing?! think not.
I would love to see sun employ the beanshell, groovy and jython team. We have to remember however, things go in small steps.
But, back to the article, this comment really threw me.
Follow Gosling's lead, and add some decent support for Groovy (code completion, re-factoring, etc.)
Wait, what? Wouldnt this be better to direct to the netbeans team rather than a bold comment at sun to DROP jruby? What on earth has code completion and refactoring got to do with any of this.
How many java developers really use netbeans? I am not saying its a bad ide, quite the opposite, but if there is one thing we know about java (which this debate ISNT really about) is that there are alot of different ides that developers use.
Some use IDEA, eclipse or netbeans. Not to say that is all they use, personally emacs is what I use unless im quickly making large changes to a code base or uis, and in those situations I do infact use netbeans.
But how does a desire for sun to drop jruby involve ide features for groovy?
I really feel the original article is (as much like this half drunken comment is doing) slashing away in the dark at a large amount of issues.
If the article is about getting better support for groovy in ides, then lobby the eclipse team, the netbeans team and intellij team.
If you want sun to hire more developers from scipting languages for the jvm, then show your support for those languages. Do not try and bash the only scripting language supported by sun at this time.
If sun is bashed for supporting jruby, and they feel that the TWO developer positions they gave the lead developers was a MISTAKE for whatever reason. Will this cause them to hire OTHER developers? I think not.
Comments
kieronwilkinson replied ago:
Forget Groovy. Support Scala! :)
reido56 replied ago:
Rick's main point is that Groovy's syntax makes more sense as an evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) step for Java. In that regard, do you think Scala (which strikes me as an advanced language) applies?
When it comes to supporting extra JVM languages, I think Sun should have thrown more support behind BeanShell.
kieronwilkinson replied ago:
I think that is a good point. However, as much as I love Java, I do think you need a bit of a larger jump than that to get the gains that Scala gives you. Stuff I am sure we will *need* in the near future. One example: Concurrency. We seem to be getting more and more cores-per-CPU these days, and Scala gives you an Erlang-style actor model which, with Scala's functional aspect, gives you very good way of creating thread-safe applications without anything like the amount of pain.
Also, one of the things I like most about Scala is its consistency. This makes it sooo much easier to learn.
axiomshell replied ago:
Couldn't agree more.
planetmcd replied ago:
I can certainly understand people preferring something over JRuby. But lets be honest, Sun has ^*&^&*)loads of money and only has a couple of developers working on it. I think the real question is how come they're not devoting equal or more to other JVM languages? Including Jython, Scala, and groovy. They dug up a billion bucks for MySQL. All of their Postgres oriented staff will likely soon be out of work (sadly), so they could retool in this direction.
hohonuuli replied ago:
The JRuby guys talk to the Groovy guys and share ideas and technical goodies. So, I think Sun's support of JRuby has been a win-win thing for all interested parties (Groovy devs, Ruby devs, Java devs and Sun); so I applaud Sun's support of JRuby.
Also, Scala is NOT a drop in replacement for JRuby or Groovy. Groovy and JRuby code can be run as scripts (i.e. no compilation phase, although you can compile Groovy). While you can create a Scala script, you can't write an entire library as Scala scripts, you have to compile the code. So Scala is more like a competitor to Java, not JRuby and Groovy.
kieronwilkinson replied ago:
Sorry, this is old, but yes you can use Scala as a scripting language. Simply "scala MyClass.scala" and it compiles it on the fly then runs it. Scripting with static typing, woohoo!
zeevb replied ago:
I'm also confused by Sun's priorities. Why did Sun push Ruby/JRuby instead of Groovy which is more Java-like in syntax and even has a JSR in place? or why not showing more support to Jython which was one of the first popular dynamic language implementations on the JVM? Python and Java also share the same principals of explicit code and community process. Python is also used in Sun itself, but still there is no proper support for it in the new Netbeans platform.
It seems to me that Sun was driven by the hype generated around RoR by some tech world celebrities. It's ironic that with all this hype around Ruby and RoR - in 2007 there was a drop in the popularity of Ruby and a rise in the popularity of Python (see http://www.dzone.com/links/tiobe_declares_python_the_programming_language_of.html).
SeanWT replied ago:
While I didnt read the article or comments that the article is actually talking about, im going to comment, because im like that. (and the article this discussion is about, is what I did actually read)
1) I do not use jruby (or ruby)
2) I have rarely used groovy
3) I have not used scala, heh, im young, give me time
But anyway.
I feel suns efforts to back a scripting language for the java platform as a way to use the jvm (which is a very advanced and well made platform / vm with hotspot blah blah blah doing great jobs) is somewhat in response to the many languages one runtime situation we see in .net.
Is this a bad thing? Nope, competition drives change, and change is mainly good. Not always, but alas.
So we have sun wanting to support other languages on the vm, how is this a bad thing regardless of what language they have chosen? Yes the ruby hype (and I do understand that ruby is an old language that has recently gained support) with the RoR hype probably had a large factor in their choice. But does this mean that jruby Is a BAD thing?! think not.
I would love to see sun employ the beanshell, groovy and jython team. We have to remember however, things go in small steps.
But, back to the article, this comment really threw me.
Follow Gosling's lead, and add some decent support for Groovy (code completion, re-factoring, etc.)
Wait, what? Wouldnt this be better to direct to the netbeans team rather than a bold comment at sun to DROP jruby? What on earth has code completion and refactoring got to do with any of this.
How many java developers really use netbeans? I am not saying its a bad ide, quite the opposite, but if there is one thing we know about java (which this debate ISNT really about) is that there are alot of different ides that developers use.
Some use IDEA, eclipse or netbeans. Not to say that is all they use, personally emacs is what I use unless im quickly making large changes to a code base or uis, and in those situations I do infact use netbeans.
But how does a desire for sun to drop jruby involve ide features for groovy?
I really feel the original article is (as much like this half drunken comment is doing) slashing away in the dark at a large amount of issues.
If the article is about getting better support for groovy in ides, then lobby the eclipse team, the netbeans team and intellij team.
If you want sun to hire more developers from scipting languages for the jvm, then show your support for those languages. Do not try and bash the only scripting language supported by sun at this time.
If sun is bashed for supporting jruby, and they feel that the TWO developer positions they gave the lead developers was a MISTAKE for whatever reason. Will this cause them to hire OTHER developers? I think not.
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