Java is a powerful, object-oriented programming language, designed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (now an Oracle affiliate) in the early 1990s, launched in 1995.
Most distributed applications are written in Java, and new technological developments allow its use also on mobile devices such as telephone, e-book, palmtop, etc. In this way, a unique platform is created, at the programmer level, above a highly diversified heterogeneous environment.
It is currently being used successfully for programming intranet applications as well.
The language borrows much of the syntax from C and C ++, but it has a simpler object model and has fewer lower-level facilities. A properly written compiled Java program can be run without modification on any platform that has a Java virtual machine installed.
This level of portability, non-existent for older languages such as C, is possible because Java sources are compiled into a standard format called byte code that is intermediate between machine code and source code.
The Java virtual machine is the environment in which Java programs are run. Currently, there are several JVM providers, including Oracle, IBM, Bea, FSF.
Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. He is JPython’s successor.
Jython software can import and use any Java class. Except for standard modules, Jython programs use Java classes instead of Python modules.
Jython includes almost all modules in the standard Python programming language distribution, with only a few of the modules initially implemented in C missing.
For example, an interface in Jython can be written with Swing, AWT, or SWT. Jython is compiled to Java bytecode (intermediate language) either on-demand or static.
Jython was initially created in late 1997 to replace C with Java for the performance-intensive code accessed by Python programs, which moved to SourceForge in October 2000. The Python Software Foundation awarded a grant in January 2005. Jython 2.5 was released in June 2009.
The latest version is Jython 2.7.1. It was released on July 1, 2017, and is compatible with Python 2.7.
Although Jython implements the Python language specification, it has some differences and incompatibilities with CPython, which is the reference implementation of Python.
LISP is a functional programming language with a long history. Originally conceived as a computing model, similar to the one built by Turing, it became the most widely used language for creating artificial intelligence applications in the glory years of this field (1970-1980). The name comes from LISt Processing.
Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language. Like Fortran, Lisp has changed much from its original form, with a number of dialects throughout the ages. Today, the most common Lisp dialects are Common Lisp and Schemes.
MATLAB (from Matrix Laboratory) is a development environment for numerical computing and statistical analysis that contains the programming language of the same name, created by MathWorks.
MATLAB allows handling of matrices, visualizing functions, implementing algorithms, creating interfaces and can interact with other applications.
Even though it specializes in numerical computing, there are packages that allow it to interact with Maple-like symbolic computing engines.
An additional package, Simulink, offers the possibility to perform dynamic and embedded systems simulations using mathematical models. MATLAB is widely used in industry, in universities and is available cross-platform, under various operating systems: Windows, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS.