Spring’s support for scripting languages allows you to extend your Java applications with beans defined in a scripting language, such as Groovy. Spring container transparently instantiates, configure and dependency injects the beans across these supported languages. Beans defined in a scripting language like Groovy come with some handy advantages such as ability to “refresh” the already loaded Groovy classes when the underlying source files change.

The concept of non-Java languages on the Java Virtual Machine is not new. The JVM has played host to several ported languages such as Ruby (JRuby), Python (Jython) and even Javascript (Rhino) along with languages designed primarily for the JVM like Scala and Groovy. Clojure (pronounced like closure) is a general purpose programming language, hosted primarily on the JVM.

Noop is a new language that attempts to blend the best lessons of languages old and new, while syntactically encouraging industry best-practices and discouraging the worst offenses. Noop is initially targeted to run on the Java Virtual Machine, is what the Noop site says.

JRuby guys leave Sun, citing the uncertainty surrounding Sun’s acquisition by Oracle and Oracle’s support for the JRuby language.

James Gosling talks of how Java the language isn’t that important but the  Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is what matters. He also takes an open approach to dynamic languages but thinks they are at times too slow for use.

Bruce Eckel, a well known Java and Flex author, in an interview with InfoQ talks of why he prefers to work with companies that use Python. He says…