The Story Of Jython

Jim Hugunin the author of Jython and implementer of AspectJ has an interesting piece on the history of Jython (Python implemented under Java). He writes:

The story of Jython begins in the spring of 1997 while I was working on my PhD at MIT. While doing some benchmark work comparing the performance of Numeric Python to a variety of other programming languages, I was amazed to discover that Java was as fast as C-code for some simple numeric benchmarks. Previously, I had been uninterested in Java because I saw it as an inferior replacement for Python. Now I saw the possibility that Java could be a replacement for the ugly and error-prone C code that I was writing for the performance intensive parts of my systems.

Now remember, that was way back in 1997. In short, for those who still think Java is slow, you've been deluding yourself for over 5 years now.