Sun Hires Two Key Python Developers

sspringer writes to let us know about Sun's continuing push to support scripting languages other than Java on its Java virtual machine. Sun just hired two key Python developers: Ted Leung, a long-time Python developer at the Open Source Applications Foundation, and Frank Wierzbicki, who is lead implementer of the Jython project. They will both work on Jython, which enables Python to run on the JVM. Last month Sun's CEO said the company wants to "take the J off the JVM and just make it a VM."

Python Developers?

[techpawn]

Got my hopes up! I thought you meant John Cleese and Terry Gilliam had new work at Sun...

Re:Python Developers?

[stoofa]

Sun statement: We have hired a key Python developer, Ted Leung Frank Wierzbicki... We have hired TWO key Python developers - I'll start again. Amongst our Python developers are such key people as..."

2008 - the year of the VM shootout

[A beautiful mind]

I guess we'll see which is better, Python's native, (J)VM or Parrot.

Re:Python Developers?

[ricebowl]

Got my hopes up! I thought you meant John Cleese and Terry Gilliam had new work at Sun...

Have you followed Gilliam's career? Almost everything the guy works on is cursed, usually with multiply-redundant curses in case one of them fails...unless you want Sun to die you don't want him working there. The poor fella.

On the other hand it would be nice to see the giant foot falling from the sky to crush any run-time errors.

Re:wow; parrot has had an impact.

[techpawn]

is if they were concerned about parrot splitting the market.

They're pythons! The parrot's dead... 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! 'E f-in' stuffed it!

Re:What happened to Tcl?

[Bogtha]

What happened to Tcl? Well judging from the look of it, I'd say it was run over by a car, then hit by a train, then had a nasty encounter with stampeding bison, then got a nasty infection from a facehugger, then beaten up by Ripley and was then promptly nuked from orbit. It's for the best, it was in a great deal of pain and nobody wants to live like that.

Seriously though, that's one ugly language. I always got the impression it's what the inventor of Brainfuck would create if he were actually being serious.

Re:What happened to Tcl?

[foobarbaz]

What happened was it starting sucking and never stopped.

Re:Mod parent up

[mechsoph]

The only way to compile such code statically would be to link against a Python compiler that can create the new opcodes from newly-generated source on the fly.

And that's what lisp was doing about 25 years ago.

Re:wow; parrot has had an impact.

[fahrbot-bot]

The only reason why Sun would hire them, now, ...

Actually it's because, with the current economic decline, Sun can no longer afford to hire Perl programmers... :-)

Re:Python Developers?

[Hythlodaeus]

No, they're clearly working on the Parrot VM (which is just resting.)

It sank into the swamp.

[mounthood]

When I first came here, this was all statically typed. Everyone said I was daft to build a dynamic language on the JVM, but I built in all the same, just to show them.

...It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.