Scripting is one of the most exciting topics in programming these days. Languages like JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and others have soared in popularity in recent years, each bringing a fresh, different perspective to the activity of programming. Project Phobos is a lightweight, scripting-friendly, web application environment whose goal is to marry the productivity and interactivity of scripting with the high performance and reliability of the Java platform. Far from being a fork in the road, the choice between a scripting language or the Java language for any particular piece of code becomes a function of convenience, fully knowing that the two entities will be able to interoperate.

In this talk, we show how the combination of scripting languages and the Java platform provides a development and deployment environment for web applications that is vastly superior to either one of its components. We describe the basic architecture of a Phobos application and show how scripting and the Java platform can combine to provide a dynamic, interactive, tool-rich environment for building state-of-the-art web application involving AJAX, REST, RSS/Atom, mashups, and more.