In recent years, the term ‘polyglot’–meaning ‘many languages’, or ‘being fluent in many languages’–has come to the world of programming. Neal Ford first coined the term ‘polyglot programming’ as one who uses multiple languages collectively as a way to build systems. And the JVM is a perfect platform on which to do this: not only do we see several languages (Groovy, Scala) becoming JVM markets in their own right, but a whole host of new languages keep appearing on the JVM, opening up new opportunities. In this talk, we’ll go over several of the different languages running on top of the JVM, going over a little bit of their history, their goals, their features, what makes them interesting, and how a Java developer might consider using them. Some will be ports of other languages, some will be influenced by other languages, but all are guaranteed to run on the JVM and thus be relevant to a Java developer who–despite the changes that came in 8 and are coming in 9–is interested in using more than Java but still remaining relevant to his or her day job.
Computational philosopher: techno-jargon for I am a big geek. Currently Director of Developer Relations at Smartsheet.