In nearly nine years of programming Java, it never really occurred to me to use it in an interpretive fashion. If I needed to test an API, I typically wrote a quick and dirty throwaway tester, compiled it, and ran it. That was my mindset at the time.

However, for the last year, I’ve been programming Python almost exclusively, and I find I’ve grown accustomed to running quick tests in the ipython command-line interpreter. Now, with my mindset suitably changed, I want the same capability when I’m doing Java work.

There are, of course, many Java-based scripting languages, and many are perfectly suitable for this kind of thing.

For example, I wanted to test a Java JSON library (the one at json.org). What better way than with Jython?

$ jython
Jython 2.5b0+ (trunk:5882, Jan 8 2009, 12:18:58) 
[Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (Sun Microsystems Inc.)] on java1.6.0_03-p3
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from org.json import *
>>> j = JSONObject({'a' : 1, 'b': [1, 2, 3], 'c': {'x': 0, 'y': 'a'}})
>>> j
{"a":1,"b":[1,2,3],"c":{"x":0,"y":"a"}}

That sure beats writing and compiling a tester, just to verify how something works. Plus, Jython/Python’s brevity of syntax is great for this kind of thing. The {} dictionary in Python translates to a HashMap. The last line (”j”) just tells the interpreter to call Python’s str() method on “j” – which Jython translates to a call to JSONObject.toString(), which is exactly what I want.

Groovy also has both power and syntactic brevity:

$ groovysh
Groovy Shell (1.6-RC-1, JVM: 1.6.0_03-p3)
Type 'help' or '\h' for help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
groovy:000> j = new JSONObject(["a" : 1, "b": [1, 2, 3], "c": ["x":0, "y": "a"]]
===> {"a":1,"b":[1,2,3],"c":{"x":0,"y":"a"}}
groovy:000> j
===> {"a":1,"b":[1,2,3],"c":{"x":0,"y":"a"}}

And, of course, you can do the same things with Scala, my new favorite language on the JVM.

Frankly, I don’t know why I didn’t think of using these tools more when I was programming Java full-time. However, I’ll sure use them now, when I find myself working in Java. The ability to run quick tests without writing a full-blown tester is just too useful to pass up.