It seems that my latest article on the polyglot evolution that you're seeing at JBoss/Red Hat has generated some interest, particularly the idea that this is about continuing to support Java in a major way. Well I took a few day off recently (Valentine's weekend) and got to thinking about why this seems news when I've been saying the same thing for a long time? The only conclusion I could come to is that maybe I've been using the wrong approach when describing it in the past. So to compliment what I've already written I put together another entry, this time over on my personal blog. I'll copy a few snippets here, but if you're interested in knowing more about how and why we're approaching this polyglot, go over and read the whole entry.

 

"This Polyglot movement is a reality and it's unlikely to go away any time soon. Fast forward a few years we may see a lot less languages around than today, but they will have been influenced strongly by their predecessors. I do believe that we need to make a distinction between the languages and the platforms that they inevitably spawn. And in this regard I think we need to learn from history now and quickly: unlike in the past we really don't need to reimplement the entire stack in the next cool language."

 

"I think the kind of approaches we're seeing with, say, TorqueBox or Immutant, where services implemented in one language are exposed to another in a way that makes them appear as if they were implemented natively, makes far more sense. Let's not waste time rehashing things like transactions, messaging and security, but instead concentrate on how best to offer these capabilities to the new polyglot movement that makes them fit in as first class citizens."