User-Centered Evolutionary Software Development Using Python and Java

The two language approach to software development has been investigated by several language designers. The primary hypothesis of such an approach being that both strong compile-time type checking and loose run-time type checking are desirable in evolutionary software development. Java is a strongly typed language which offers performance, robustness and modularity as such, while Python is a weakly typed language which offers rapid prototyping, dynamic run-time modification, and delayed evaluation. The premise of this work is that evolutionary software development using both languages together can be more efficient than using either language alone. The Java Python Interface (JPI) is an interface between Java and Python which allows the two languages to interoperate through dynamic message lookup and the conversion and exchange of objects and exceptions. Through the JPI, Python be used as a scripting language for Java -from a Python interpreter one can prototype AWT components and even create bindings which call Python code. In addition, the JPI can be used to add user level Python scripting to Java programs.