Episode 24 – Move over Java, Introducing The Fantom Language with Brian and Andy Frank
Our very own Basement Coder Justin Lee arranged for an interview with the creators of the Fantom language: Andy and Brian Frank. It's no coincidence the Frank's share the same last name, they are indeed brothers who work at their own company called Sky Foundry.
Aside from Justin, the rest of the Basement Coders hadn't heard of Fantom. Justin assured us it would be worth looking into, and after a cursory glance we all decided that yes, we want to interview these fellows!
When I started looking into Fantom I immediately was struck with the notion of "If Java were to have progressed in both language features and syntax, this is what it would look like". That's because Fantom looks very Java-like and also runs on the JVM or .NET CLR, so you can leverage all your existing code! Given this, Fantom's approachability factor is much higher than Scala in that a Java/.NET programmer can look at it and immediately know what's happening. Scala has a bit more of an "alien" syntax for Java/.NET developers, and it's tough to just "jump into" Scala code without first researching the language and its features.
So take Java, add syntax for Closures, Mixins, Dynamic Method Binding and you have Fantom. For these reasons alone you should do yourself a favour and take a look at it, if you like what you see, get the word out to your friends and collegues and help Brian and Andy grow the community and the language itself.
Listen here:
Enjoy!
About the Author
On 
I checked it out and started to put some time into it. Besides the language, the community is great and the authors are routinely answering to questions, giving insights and support.
“He discovered Struts and never looked back” ? You’re kidding, right !?
@Mikkel maybe they meant: he doesn’t look back to struts
@Mikkel
Struts was a great step forward, too bad Craig M. had to go and create JSF 
Wicket FTW!
You obviously weren’t in web development back in 2000