Presumably because at the time of writing JRuby and Scala were in their infancy. As regards Java, few build tools actually use a compiled language, as you end up with a recursive problem if you're not careful. At the moment I can only think of SBT (the build is written in Scala) and Gosling, an aborted attempt at doing ant but with Java source code, neither of which existed in 2003 when that article was written.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Alexey Zinger <[email protected]> wrote: > In the article, Duncan refers to Jonathan Simon's push to > Jython<http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2003/06/10/jython.html>as a > programming replacement for XML. As I read over Simon's points in > favor of Jython, it occurred to me that he was advocating methods to relieve > problems seen in XML-based programming languages that operate in the JVM. > Problems like excessive verbosity, awkward syntax constructs, shortcomings > of expressiveness that cause Java or other languages to bleed into XML, lack > of scoping definitions. He's making the same points that were touched on in > this thread earlier, but he's also elevating Jython as a solution to all XML > problems for no particular reason. > > In the JellySwing example, he correctly states all the problems that arise > when you try to use XML for a complex Java UI, but he skips over the fact > that Java itself has declarative syntax capabilities and instead proceeds to > Jython. In fact, his Jython version of the code is not too dissimilar from > what it would look like in standard Java even without the declarative style. > > When he talks about Ant, he immediately looks at the direction the > community has taken in making Ant a full-bore programming language through > general purpose, but awkward scripting language extensions. Agreed: bad > idea. But here again, he doesn't address why mixing specialized plugins > written in a different language (which, thanks to all the latest langauges > on the JVM can be written in whatever is "right" for the job) would be worse > than throwing XML out altogether and switching everything over to Jython. > Why not Java, or Scala, or JRuby, or god knows what else? There doesn't > seem to be a coherent argument made in favor of the proposed solution. And > the question of why Ant is so bad as an extensible glue language that > plays well with underlying OS environments as well as the JVM world remains > untouched. > > Alexey > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* phil swenson <[email protected]> > *To:* Ricky Clarkson <[email protected]> > *Cc:* [email protected]; Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]>; > Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]>; Moandji Ezana <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Wed, March 9, 2011 10:22:26 AM > *Subject:* Re: [The Java Posse] Is learning languages overrated? > > This mostly covers it. > > http://weblogs.java.net/blog/duncan/archive/2003/06/ant_dotnext.html > > 2011/3/9 Ricky Clarkson <[email protected]> > >> Even the guy who created ant (James Duncan Davidson) now thinks XML was a >>> bad idea. >> >> >> Do you have a reference for that? I used to have one but it disappeared. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
