Posted by Jeroen van Erp at around evening time: March 13th, 2008
The biggest Java event of the year is coming up again, the JavaOne. For me this is a place of inspiration. Seeing the newest technologies in action and talking to some of the great minds in the Java world, how can one not become inspired!
One of the big subjects this year, which has been getting bigger over the past few years is the scripting support on the Java Platform. There are numerous talks on all the different scripting languages. Let’s get some numbers for an overview:
| Technical Session | Panel Session | Birds of a Feather | |
| Scala | 1 | 1 | |
| Groovy / Grails | 7 | 1 | 4 |
| (J)Ruby / Rails | 7 | 1 | 3 |
| Jython | 1 | 1 |
These numbers are based on whether the subject contains the scripting language, or whether the presenters show examples in the language. One of the languages I didn’t mention is the JavaScript language. JavaScript is a real scripting language, which is supported on the Java platform, but almost every talk on some Webby subject intrinsically deals with JavaScript. This would severely pollute the count.
What we can see from the above table is that Groovy and (J)Ruby are almost equally represented. Whether the organization did this on purpose, or whether it is purely coincidental is unknown to us of course. What is noticeable though is that just one BOF in which Groovy examples are used is presented by a Sun employee, whereas many Technical Sessions on (J)Ruby are presented by Sun employees.
At the JavaOne we’ll see what direction the community will take with regards to the scripting languages on the JVM. Especially the panel session on Wednesday will provide some insight in how the different languages relate and how the community regards them. I’ll be there during the panel session to hear and see what the community deems the ideal scripting language.
I wish I could make it! I’ve become really interested in Groovy and Scala recently. At least another (more local) conference I’ll be attending has several Groovy/Grails talks.
Come and say hi at the end of the panel