Slightly modified from original posthttp://adamldavis.com/

There’s a hot new programming language that I’m excited about. It can be used dynamically or statically-typed, your choice. It supports functional programming constructs, including first-class functions, currying, and more. It has multiple-inheritance, type inference, and meta-programming. It also integrates really well with a battle-tested enterprise-worthy language and best-of-class virtual machine.

This programming language actually isn’t that new. It’s from 2004, but they’ve recently added a lot of new features, such as traits. Oh, did I mention it has a great community and tons of frameworks built on top of it for web-applications, testing, and even full build systems. This language is great for building DSL’s and is very light-weight. Oh, and it can be compiled to JavaScript and it can be used to develop for Android.

As you might have guessed, this language is called “Groovy”. The virtual machine it’s built on is the JVM, the web framework is Grails, the testing framework is spock, and the build system is Gradle.

As you may have heard, Pivotal has dropped its Groovy/Grails support. Although some will take this news as sky-falling bad news, I actually think it’s the opposite. Pivotal only "acquired" the developers behind Groovy and Grails through a “Russian nesting doll” turn of events. In short, SpringSource bought G2One then Pivotal bought SpringSource (and VMWare goes in there somewhere).

There are tons of companies that stand to benefit from Groovy that could take up its funding: Google, Oracle, and Gradleware come to mind.

Groovy has a lot going for it. With projects like ratpackgrooscript, gradle, and others, its future looks bright.

Also: Grails has improved dramatically and will support microservices much better in the next release (3) among other improvements.

UpdateGroovy Moving to a Foundation

Views: 129

Comment

You need to be a member of Codetown to add comments!

Join Codetown

Comment by Jackie Gleason on April 24, 2015 at 9:27am
In my world people aren't letting the news worry them too much. No plans to switch back to spring but I do think this highlights one of the weaknesses of Groovy. It is a lot harder to convert a Groovy file into a Java file than the reverse.
Comment by Adam Davis on March 5, 2015 at 4:47pm

Update: Groovy stewardship is moving to the Apache Software Foundation.

Here's a great article by Cédric Champeau (one of the developers behind Groovy) on Groovy's history and who has contributed to it over the years: http://melix.github.io/blog/2015/02/who-is-groovy.html

Comment by Adam Davis on March 1, 2015 at 9:56am

Clarification: Groovy and Grails are open-source projects. I used the short-hand "acquired" to describe Pivotal's hiring of the developers behind Groovy and Grails. Groovy and Grails development would continue even if no one hires these developers, just at a slower pace. 

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

AWS Reduces Latency and Costs for Key/Value Datastores with AZ Affinity Routing and GLIDE Valkey

AWS recently introduced Availability Zone (AZ) awareness in version 1.2 of the open source Valkey General Language Independent Driver for Enterprise (GLIDE) client library. By implementing AZ affinity routing in the open source key/value datastore, developers can reduce latency and costs by directing requests to replicas within the same AZ as the client.

By Renato Losio

Uber's Cloud Journey: Embracing ARM in an x86 World

Uber embarked on a strategic migration from on-premise data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud Platform in February 2023. A key component of this migration was integrating ARM-based computers into their predominantly x86 fleet to reduce costs, improve price performance, and ensure hardware flexibility amid supply chain uncertainties.

By Claudio Masolo

Google Gemini's Long-term Memory Vulnerable to a Kind of Phishing Attack

AI security hacker Johann Rehberger described a prompt injection attack against Google Gemini able to modify its long-term memories using a technique he calls delayed tool invocation. The researcher described the attack as a sort of social engineering/phishing attack triggered by the user interacting with a malicious document.

By Sergio De Simone

Azure AI Agent Service Now in Public Preview for Developers in AI Foundry SDK and Portal

Introducing the Azure AI Agent Service: a groundbreaking platform that empowers developers to design, deploy, and manage intelligent AI agents seamlessly integrated within the Microsoft ecosystem. Automate tasks, access real-time data, and monitor performance, all while benefiting from easy setup and advanced orchestration. Transform your business with AI-driven efficiency and innovation.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

.NET MAUI Community Toolkit Adds .NET 9, Offline Speech Recognition

Between December 2024 and January 2025, Microsoft released versions 10.0.0 and 11.0.0 of their open-source .NET MAUI Community Toolkit. The new versions add .NET 9 support and offline speech recognition to the toolkit. Many small updates and bug fixes are also released with the toolkit.

By Edin Kapić

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service