Dart vs. Java vs. Python vs. ZenScript Comparison Chart

The Java™ Programming Language is a general-purpose, concurrent, strongly typed, class-based object-oriented language. It is normally compiled to the bytecode instruction set and binary format defined in the Java Virtual Machine Specification. In the Java programming language, all source code is first written in plain text files ending with the .java extension. Those source files are then compiled into .class files by the javac compiler. A .class file does not contain code that is native to your processor; it instead contains bytecodes — the machine language of the Java Virtual Machine1 (Java VM). The java launcher tool then runs your application with an instance of the Java Virtual Machine.

ZenScript originated from MineTweaker where a simple programming language is needed to allow users without programming knowledge to be able to execute simple commands by following the tutorials for it. Originally MineTweaker had a simple one-line-at-a-time parsed scripting system, but it quickly became clear that it wasn't flexible enough, so a simple parsed language was created. This parsed language worked quite well but was very inefficient as each value was wrapped into its own object. ZenScript allows mixed typed and typeless behavior. You don't need to define types anywhere, the compile will infer them where possible and exhibit typeless behavior when the type is effectively unknown. In nearly all the cases, the type is perfectly known and execution runs at native Java speed. Since there are types, they can be documented and enforced.