Best partner language for Java -- Python, Ruby, or X?
alex_c: There's Groovy (http://groovy.codehaus.org/).  I didn't get a great feeling about it when I tried it a couple years ago, but I really haven't used it much or know enough about it to pass judgement.  It sells itself as "builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk", so it seemed pertinent to this thread.