Sun believes Python technology is a worthy investment, the company stated this week, and demonstrated this by applying for membership in the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and hiring Ted Leung, long-time Python developer at the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF), and Frank Wierzbicki, lead implementor of the Jython project (Python on the Java VM).

Python is one of several dynamic or scripting languages that have grown in popularity in the past few years. It is an object-oriented programming language used for a variety of applications, from the web to the desktop, that can run on a range of operating systems and virtual machines. Developers are using scripting languages like Python for its high developer productivity and ease of integration with other languages and tools.

For their roles, Sun commented in a prepared statement, "Ted will be actively participating in Python projects and will provide leadership from tooling to platforms, within Sun. Frank will be continuing his work with Jython. Both Ted and Frank will be active members of the Python community and will help Sun learn how to address the community's needs."

The two high-profile Python programmers are part of a recent move by Sun to develop various open source projects by enticing to its team well-known developers, such as Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock, JRuby lead technologists Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, and Nick Kew, who is working on Apache Software Foundation technologies and OpenSolaris.

In his blog, Leung commented, "As part of Sun's new direction, Sun wants to give developers the ability to use whatever tool sets they want. Ruby, Python, PHP, Java. On or off OpenSolaris. On or off the JVM (Java virtual machine)."

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz expressed Sun's intentions to make multiple languages besides Java run on the JVM and has created a project known as the Da Vinci Machine to develop prototype JVM extensions that will run non-Java languages.

Both Leung and Wierzbicki credited Tim Bray, Sun's director of Web Technologies, as instrumental in making their moves to Sun an irresistible opportunity.

"I have to especially thank Tim Bray, who has been pushing the dynamic language thing at Sun for quite a long time. I'm sure the warm welcome that I got at Sun was in no small part due to the enormous success of the JRuby work that has been going on there..." Wierzbicki commented.

He also noted, "This move by Sun means that Jython is going to get some of the attention that it needs to move forward. The JRuby folks have already been working with the Jython folks to find those places where we can share code."

Sun officials said the company has been making a major investment in Ruby technology and its community, and are looking to do the same with a variety of technologies. Python and Jython are the next ones up.

It should be noted that for the past four years developers have been working on Orca, which is one of the first official Python projects at Sun, reminded Rich Burridge. He encourages those who haven't tried Python to do so and offered a link to the Essential Python Reading List to help everyone get started. [...read more...]

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