1.5 = death of Jython?

[blahblahblahh]

OK, so it wouldn’t actually kill Jython per se, but is 1.5 going to remove the impetus for most Java developers / teams to use Jython? (obviously, those who have to interact with Python, or have a large team of python users, would be unaffected).

Y’see, AFAICS, many of the biggest advantages of Jython are being implemented in 1.5 (hallelujah!), e.g.:

[]autoboxing
[]simplified iterators (can’t remember the technical term atm, sri :))
[*]auto-casting a la STL

Obviiously, that leaves a few features unimplemented, but when Java has those, the value seems to me to go down considerably, for most people I suspect below the point where it’s worth using 2 languages instead of 1 on a project.

…and Jython still has that annoying “tabs denote scope” bug (OK, they call it a feature. But try editing Python code in an HTML form ).

[shawnkendall]

You don’t have to compile JPython.
That makes it a great way to do “live” in-game run-time scripting and changes.

[blahblahblahh]

[quote]You don’t have to compile JPython.
That makes it a great way to do “live” in-game run-time scripting and changes.
[/quote]
A good point. Although it’s not that much effort to programmatically run javac, and even catch the error output and re-route to wherever your developer is editing source?

But one thing I particularly like about Jython (and others that can call java objs interactively) is that you can make a rudimentary debugger very easily, which is helpful if you have novice programmers who are trying to work out why their script isn’t working.

(take the script source, execute it line by line - because it doesn’t have to be compiled first, you can do this very easily).

[gregorypierce]

Jython is a much better ‘scripting’ language than Java, but since the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF) makes it possible to use other scripting languages (include the Java styled BeanShell) I don’t see scripting languages going away with 1.5.

[swpalmer]

Interesting… but will the real BSF please stand up:

I found an IBM version here:
http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/projects/bsf

And an Apache version here:
http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/

Neither one seems to mention the other (I could have missed it), yet they seem to be exactly the same thing.

[Matzon]

From the FAQ:

BSF began life in 1999 as a research project of Sanjiva Weerawarana at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. The initial intent had been to provide access to JavaBeans from scripting language environments (though there is nothing limiting access only to Java Beans). It was soon moved to IBM's AlphaWorks developer site, where significant interest (both internal and external to IBM) led to its being moved to IBM's developerWorks site, where BSF could operate as an open source project. During this time, significant development was done by Matt Duftler and Sam Ruby, and BSF was incorporated into both IBM products (Websphere) and Apache projects (Xalan). It was this interest on the part of the Apache Software Foundation that ultimately led to BSF's acceptance as a subproject of Jakarta in 2002.

During the process of moving BSF to Jakarta, development continued within IBM, with further improvements to BSF's integration with Jasper being made by John Shin and the addition of debugging support for the Javascript language (a team effort, resulting from the work of IBM researchers Olivier Gruber, Jason Crawford, and John Ponzo, and IBM software developers Chuck Murcko and Victor Orlikowski).

It is the current version, 2.3, that has been donated to Apache Software Foundation from IBM.

[swpalmer]

[quote]From the FAQ:
…
During the process of moving BSF to Jakarta, development continued within IBM…
[/quote]
Ok… so as I suspected they started out as the same thing, but I’m not sure if this means there are now two separate development streams of BSF or what…