Is there more to the JVM than Java?

OK it has been a while lets get back together and rejuvenate the CJC. So lets meetup at IdeaSpace www.ideaspace.cam.ac.uk

To start we have an after work talk from George Marrows and Duncan MacGregor on porting an existing dynamic language on to the JVM this should give everyone a fresh perspective on why we are on the JVM and the upsides and downsides most of us have already forgotten about. The George and Duncan’s talk will cover the following:

The Smallworld geographic information system (http://tinyurl.com/smallworld-gis) is implemented in a dynamic language called Magik. We're moving Magik from its current custom virtual machine over to the JVM, while keeping millions of lines of existing Magik application code working just the same as before.

Come along to hear why we're doing this. We'll cover:

• A quick introduction to the Smallworld and Magik
• The thinking behind our switch to the JVM
• Using the new Java 7 invokedynamic instruction to get great dynamic
  language performance on the JVM
• Interfacing to 400,000 lines of critical C libraries using the Java
  Native Interface
• The ups and downs of using OSGi for modularisation
• Why we stopped using Scala

There'll be plenty of time for questions and discussion - we'd love to hear your experiences with any these technologies.

Following the talk let’s gather some thoughts and inspiration for other cool stuff we could cover in the CJC.