Some Jython musings: Red Robin for Eclipse, Zope under Java
Sadly, Groovy’s Eclipse plugin has been out of commission for a while (since I’ve been using the 3.0 Eclipse versions for a while). I don’t think Groovy’s plugin at its height was as complete as Red Robin, the Jython (Python) plugin for Java. Looks like a bunch of great features, and it’s 3.0 compatible. I plan to give this a whirl next week.
On the more general topic of Groovy and Jython… I like Groovy because it has some nice language features but can also run a good deal of Java code straight up. This makes it a more seamless transition between Java and Groovy.
On the other hand, I’ve liked Python for many years, and Jython can open the doors to using many Python-based libraries in addition to your Java favorites. One big downside, though, is that the current release version of Jython has fallen way behind, ever since the big class/type mashup that happened in Python 2.2. I was using Jython quite a bit in 2001, and I think Jython 2.1 was current then. There’s an early test release of Jython 2.2. I’d love to see them get caught up.
Part of what I was using Jython for back in 2001 was an attempt to port Zope to Jython. I started this project (Phabric) while at Web Elite. Though we had ported enough of ExtensionClass and Acquisition to make a bunch of unit tests pass, there were some gnarly differences between CPython and Jython and we ran out of time on the project. The changes in Python 2.2, once integrated into Jython, could make porting Zope to Java much more of a reality. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Oh no, we just got away from the horror that is Zope to the safe non-memory-leaking, threadsafe Java terrain. You can’t seriously suggest bringing that monstrosity to plague people who have once again gotten used to adult tools?
Hmm… Zope didn’t leak memory a few years back when I was using it. Granted, I haven’t really touched it since 2001.
“adult tools” is an odd expression. I’d rather use the right tool for the job. Sometimes, one doesn’t need to make 200 XML descriptor files to produce a web application. There are certain things that Zope is good at. There are certain reasons that people will also choose to work in Perl or PHP.
Having more choices running on the JVM is a good thing, IMHO.
If you like Groovy for being Java-like, then Beanshell might be right up your alley.
BeanShell’s problem is that it’s *too* Java-like. You get the disadvantages of not working in Java (no IDE support), but don’t get as many of the high-level construct advantages as working in Jython or Groovy.