Java Makes Scripting Languages Irrelevant?

I n computing, we often solve a complex problem by adding another level of indirection. For example, in Unix file systems, an index node, or inode, data structure lets the operating system allocate files concurrently and sparsely while still providing an efficient random-access capability. When we want to customize large, complex systems or express fluid, rapidly changing requirements, we frequently add a scripting layer on top of the corresponding system. Back in 1962 to 1963, Dan Murphy did this when he developed his TECO (text editor and corrector) editor on the Digital Equipment Corp.’s PDP-1; its command language also doubled as an arcane (to put it politely) macro language. Twenty years later, adding a scripting-language interface to existing applications (often written in C) was all the rage. Lotus 123 supported macro commands, Framework had the FRED (frame editor) language, and you could program AutoCAD and Emacs in a form of Lisp. On the Unix platform, administrators wrote sophisticated sendmail configuration files to bridge email networks—which were then disparate and mutually incompatible. John Ousterhout completed the picture by developing Tcl/Tk as a general-purpose scripting language for integration with any system that could benefit from such a capability. A few years later, Microsoft came up with Application Basic as its generalpurpose scripting language for all its office productivity applications. Those early developments acquainted programmers with the notion of customizing applications through scripting and opened the road for powerful, general-purpose scripting languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby (see John Ousterhout’s article, “Scripting: HigherLevel Programming for the 21st Century,” in Computer’s March 1998 issue). Scripting languages glued to applications serve an important purpose: they greatly ease the application’s configuration and customization and support end-user programming by offering a safe and friendly development environment. Gone are the intricacies of C’s memory management, the convoluted string manipulation, and the complexity of the application’s internal data structures. Instead, the scripting language typically offers automatic memory management, a powerful string data type, sophisticated data structures, a rich repertoire of operations, and an intuitive API for manipulating application data and state. Additionally, by interpreting the scripting language, the application can isolate itself from undesirable effects of the scripting code, such as crashes and data corruption. My impression is that with the evolution of Java and Microsoft’s .NET offerings (I’ll use the term Java as a stand-in for both alternatives), the niche occupied by scripting languages is rapidly shrinking. We are approaching the end of an era. Java Makes Scripting Languages Irrelevant?