I love this page, have a browse around its like going back to university learning many languages in the same day! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages Look at all those wonderful ideas. There are some that most of us would be familiar with others that hark back to a previous era, and yet more that are just pure genius. Personal favorites include Frink which, “represents all numerical quantities as not simply a number, but a number and the units of measurement that quantity represents. What that means is you can convert a value to another unit and track units through calculations easily.
i.e.
38 feet -> meters
11.5824
Another great idea from Frink is that it can access Historical and Current exchange rates. Apparently it gets is current data from a low latency currency service.
To form combinations you can add them (using parentheses when necessary). For example, to convert a historical rate per day to current dollars/year:
(4 pounds_1860 + 3 shilling_1860 + 5 pence_1860) / day -> dollars/year
101853.3826649
Kind of fun eh! Its got a massive file describing all the units available, most I have never even heard of to be honest!
Another favorite is NetLogo a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. Netlogo is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Modelers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of “agents” all operating independently. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behavior of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from the interaction of many individuals.
Where am I going with this article you may ask…well nowhere really, except perhaps to say that the JVM is a pretty impressive technology and that its kind of fun to see a language you have not used in 10 years, or something new for a change. So if you get fed up with the endless rounds of turkey this week perhaps you could pick up Pnuts or become a Fan of a new language. 