Will GPL Java eat into Python marketshare?

[Maurice LING]

> 
> I once wrote a partial JVM in Modula-3 (strictly a researchware
> effort), so I can imagine it being done technically.  But why?
> 
> The big problem with Java-and-Python is not the VMs underneath.  It is
> the fact that Java has layers upon layers upon layers of idiosyncratic
> libraries and idioms.  When you write bindings to that world (even if
> the bindings are generated automagically), you have to *think* in
> those same layers.  The Python-oriented developer suddenly has to use
> a dozen imports in order to do things already done better in
> Pythonesque libraries.
> 

The main use I can see is to be able to incorporate Java applications 
into Python. For example, I am using Cytoscape (www.cytoscape.org) which 
is in Java. I do hope that I can control Cytoscape from Python and 
manipulate its objects from Python.

Say given cytoscape.jar, I'll like to be able to do this:

 >>> from cytoscape javaimport cytoscape
 >>> c = cytoscape()

And the tighest way I see that this can be done is for Python VM to 
execute Java bytecodes like Python bytecodes. That is, Python VM 
executes Java bytecodes directly and not through object mapping which I 
think is that JPyPe is doing.

I must say that this is part of even a fluffier dream that one day, I 
can take any applications and play around with it in Python. Currently, 
my collaborators wrote in Perl and Java, so it is not easy for me to use 
their work in my work.

ML