Groovy?

Posted At : August 4, 2008 6:49 PM | Posted By : Gary Gilbert
Related Categories: Groovy

I've been hearing the word Groovy with growing frequency lately and even from Sean Corfield. I have to be honest, about a month ago I had no idea what Groovy was with the exception that it's a 60's word for "cool" or "phat" or as Paris Hilton would say "That's Hot!".

That doesn't mean that it is no longer used in "every day" speech to mean exactly that, it's just that it's taken on a very new technical meaning for me now. OK so maybe I've been living under a technological rock or something to have only just heard of Groovy (invented back in 2003!) but I figure better late than never right?

The Bandwagon

I may as well jump on ye ole' band wagon too right? I am certainly not the only one. You can write Portlets for Liferay in Groovy, and tap into openCMS, or in the next release of Intrexx Extreme, or in Alfresco (since v2.2)

Worth learning?

Tough question really as I think the more you learn the more marketable you are so the easy answer is yes.

I've taken a look at some of the examples and it looks relatively straight forward, there are some interesting bits of the language that will take time to get the hang of. There is also Grails (groovy-on-rails) to play with too.

I'm just not sure when I will have the time to learn yet another programming language. Like most of the other languages I've learned I need to have an actual project to do in order for it to be fixed in my head.

Perhaps I can squeeze in some time to try it out. What are your opinions on Groovy and it's usefulness?

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6 Comments to "Groovy?"- Add Yours

I too am interested in knowing more about Groovy. It seems like a good way to go. My big question is, "Java or Groovy?", I want to learn a higher level language. I don't want to be a one-trick pony, as I am sure no one does. But I don't have the time to learn the half-dozen languages that interest me. So my question is, as a developer, and as a ColdFusion developers, and as someone who wants to make a good living going forward with Marketable skills, am I better off going the traditional Java Route, or should I look at Groovy as the future?

Obviously, this is not a simple question, but I thought I would throw it out there. Maybe I am not the only person with this question.

# Posted By Jason Dean | 8/4/08 8:57 PM

Groovy compiler accepts 99% of all Java code syntax. Give it a try... I am ;)

# Posted By Rodrigo Reyes | 8/4/08 9:02 PM

Thats a pretty good reason, kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Only problem is there isn't enough hours in the day to learn everything :)

# Posted By Gary Gilbert | 8/4/08 9:04 PM

I'm looking at Groovy and Grails right now. I found some great tutorials on Grails from, of all places, IBM's Developer Works. We're using ColdFusion now, but I'm not convinced that its worth what we pay. Its great for connecting to databases but its a bit outdated when it comes to developing an application. Too much manual work for me. I really like Django and Python, but don't see that happening here. Java is our platform for the time-being, so when I started hearing about Groovy and Grails, I became somewhat intrigued. When I heard there was a Flex plug-in for Grails, I became very intrigued.

By the way, here's the first tutorial on Grails from IBM's developer works site:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-g...

# Posted By Jeff Self | 8/4/08 12:56 AM

@Jeff,

Don't forget that Adobe isn't the only player when it comes to a Coldfusion Engine. While they may have inherited Coldfusion from Macromedia (and Allaire before that), There are a few other CFML engine vendors out there. One I would highly recommend taking a look at is http://www.railo.ch. Railo costs a fraction of what Adobe CF costs.

I am also rather intrigued as to what you mean by outdated? Too Manual?

Nevertheless I do think I will be taking a closer look at groovy and grails for that matter. Thanks for the tip on the IBM site

# Posted By Gary | 8/4/08 1:29 AM

@Gary,

My opinion of ColdFusion is that its a second generation web development tool. The first generation was CGI. Second generation includes PHP, ASP, ColdFusion and JSP. These to me are page-centric. Everything is about creating a page. The third generation tools are about creating an application. Ruby on Rails, Django, TurboGears, Grails. Yes, I know these are all frameworks and that ColdFusion is a language. I did take a serious look at Model-Glue a year ago but did not like the XML stuff involved. Haven't looked at ColdBox yet. Don't know if I'll take the time because I find Grails to be a very quick development tool.

# Posted By Jeff Self | 8/4/08 6:25 AM

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