As both a fan and user of the great technologies Python, and the Sun JVM (primarily via Java), I was very happy to come across this eWeek article which says that Sun announced the hiring of two key Python engineers. You can read more about the hiring of Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki at their respective blogs.

I had pretty much written off Jython as being dead quite some time ago, but luckily it has had a lot of recent activity and is starting to catch back up with C-Python. By both hiring key JRuby and Jython developers, it looks like Sun is making sure the JVM stays relevant beyond Java and continues to evolve as what in my opinion is the best option for cross-platform applications.

Having a long background in ColdFusion (an Adobe language which compiles down to Java bytecode and runs on the JVM), I’ve seen first hand the benefits of moving a language to the JVM, and I look forward to seeing more progress on both JRuby and Jython on the JVM.