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Comment on Creating beautiful charts with JRuby and JFreeChart

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Being able to add an interpreted script engine to a Java application is a super-power for some uses. I embedded a Jython (Python in the JVM) command line into a Java Swing app to provide a level of flexibility that I never could with a GUI. Every time I look at JRuby I wonder if Jython was the right choice. It is too late now but JRuby looks awfully nice.

IMHO it is one of the big tragedies of modern IT history, that JavaScript and Python 'own' the market for scripting languages in the mainstream.

From a pure technical perspective, I would guess JRuby or one of the JavaScript implementations would have been a better choice for scripting, especially given the poor state of Jython.

From a pragmatic perspective and what your users are mostly able to figure out, Python might have been the best choice. I even saw software developers with years of experience in imperative languages struggling to understand Rubys blocks...

Out of pure interest: What was the purpose of the Java application and which aspects did you allow the users of the application to script with Jython?

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