Introduction

Rony G. Flatscher Rony.Flatscher at wu.ac.at
Sat Mar 18 18:18:30 UTC 2017


Hi there,

My name is Rony G. Flatscher and have signed the OCA, such that I will be able to contribute to the
Open JDK project.

My first encounter with Java was more than 20 years ago, when IBM distributed Java with the PC
operating system OS/2. Ever since then I have been using Java including teaching Java programming at
different Universities and building libraries vor various purposes. Today I am working as an IS
professor at the WU [1] in Austria, which - with appr. 25,000 students - is one of the largest
universities of its kind in Europe.

Over the course of the last 30 years I have experimented and finally succeeded in teaching
programming (later 00-programming) to interested BA students in two lectures (totalling four hours
plus home and group work). The first lecture [1a] introduces OO programming and has students apply
the acquired knowledge to automate Windows and programmatically interface with MS Excel and MS Word
(and non-MS-Windows application) using COM/OLE. The second lecture [1b] adds on the acquired
knowledge and does the same in a platform independent manner, i.e. teach the students how to do the
same on Linux and MacOSX in addition to Windows plus teach them the fundamentals of GUI and socket
programming, how to program, but also create macros for Apache Open Office in place of MS Office on
Linux and MacOSX (this works for Windows as well). The secret or magic behind teaching this heavy
load successfully in such a short time is using an easy to learn yet powerful programming
(scripting) language named ooRexx ([2], [3], [4]) *together* with Java by authoring an ooRexx-Java
bridge named BSF4ooRexx ([5], [6]). BSF4ooRexx camouflages the strictly typed and strictly cased
Java as the dynamically typed, caseless ooRexx.

The first steps towards today's BSF4ooRexx involved Apache's Bean Scripting Framework ([6],
originating from an IBM opensource project to make scripting languages available to Java Server
pages, JSP). Due to contributions to the ASF BSF project I was invited to become an ASF committer,
and later an Apache member.

When JSR-223 ([7]) was created to define a scripting framework for Java, I joined as an expert to
contribute my expertise. With Java 1.6/6, the resulting javax.script [8] package was introduced into
the Java world in 2006.

With this background it should be understandable that I am very interested in Java scripting and
applying scriptability in ways that programmers, who are not necessarily professional programmers,
but "business adminstration programmers", can take full advantage of the latest Java technologies
and Java class libraries. So I am also interested in the evolution of the Java language and the Java
runtime environment as well.

Currently I have been very interested in the JavaFX area, as its support for JSR-223 (javax.script)
makes it possible to take advantage of Java scripting languages. By default this is
Javascript/Nashorn, but there is support to define any javax.script engine in the context of
individual FXML files, such that one can implement appropriate controllers not only in Java or
JavaScript, but in any available Java script language!

I think that advancing the JavaFX javax.script support a little bit in the context of FXML, but also
in the context of the web engine would make it very attractive for any Java scripting language  to
employ JavaFX. Also, if one realizes that professional programmers usually use up to three, four
programming languages (for different purposes, application domains), it would be very attractive if
JavaFX would allow to mix-in/apply as many scripting languages as a programmer sees fit. So I would
try to come up with contributions in this area first, by proposing some simple, backwardly
compatible enhancements to the current support for javax.script.

However, due to my regular work-load this will take some time for me to procure the necessary
resources to these areas of interest. Any help, any hints and any advices are really always welcome!

Looking forward to interesting, constructive and fruitful interactions with the OpenJDK community,
hoping to be able to contribute a little bit!

---rony

[1] WU, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna University of Economics and Business):
<https://www.wu.ac.at/en>
[1a] "Business Programming 1" (currently taught in German):
<http://wi.wu.ac.at/rgf/wu/lehre/autowin/2017sBP1/BP1-autowin-2017s-uebersicht.pdf>
[1b] "Business Programming 2" (currently taught in German):
<http://wi.wu.ac.at/rgf/wu/lehre/autojava/2017sBP2/BP2-autojava-2017s-uebersicht.pdf>

[2] ECOOP 2006 workshop on dynamic languages, overview article about Rexx and ooRexx: <http://wi.wu-
wien.ac.at/rgf/rexx/misc/ecoop06/ECOOP2006_RDL_Workshop_Flatscher_Paper.pdf>
[3] "ooRexx" (Sourceforge) sources, binaries: <https://sourceforge.net/projects/oorexx/>
[4] "Introduction to Rexx and ooRexx", book, orderable via <http://www.facultas.at/2014/flatscher>

[5] "BSF4ooRexx" (Sourceforge) sources, binaries (download latest beta):
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsf4oorexx/>[6] "Apache Bean Scripting Framework (BSF)":
<http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-bsf/>
[7] "JSR-000223 Scripting for the JavaTM":
<https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr223/index.html>
[8] Javadocs 8 for "javax.script":
<https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/index.html?javax/script/package-summary.html>



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