Codetown
Codetown ::: a software developer's community
Hot New Language (Groovy)
Slightly modified from original post: http://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 ratpack, grooscript, 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.
Update: Groovy Moving to a Foundation
Comment
-
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
-
-
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.
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.
InfoQ Reading List
AWS Launches Managed Openclaw on Lightsail Amid Critical Security Vulnerabilities
AWS launched managed OpenClaw on Lightsail for AI agent deployment while security concerns mount. The 250k-star GitHub project is affected by CVE-2026-25253, which enables one-click RCE, with 17,500+ vulnerable instances exposed. Bitdefender found 20% of ClawHub skills malicious. AWS blueprint provides automated hardening, but doesn't address architectural security limits.
By Steef-Jan WiggersElastic Releases Version 9.3.0 With Enhanced AI Tools and OTel Support
Elastic 9.3.0 is now available, featuring enhanced vector search indexing for RAG applications and significant upgrades to the ES|QL query language. The release deepens OpenTelemetry integration for vendor-neutral observability and updates the AI Assistant with better contextual analysis. Security visibility is also expanded across Kubernetes and serverless architectures.
By Mark SilvesterHow Grab Optimizes Image Caching on Android with Time-Aware LRU
To improve image cache management in their Android app, Grab engineers transitioned from a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache to a Time-Aware Least Recently Used (TLRU) cache, enabling them to reclaim storage more effectively without degrading user experience or increasing server costs.
By Sergio De SimoneGoogle Researchers Propose Bayesian Teaching Method for Large Language Models
Google Research has proposed a training method that teaches large language models to approximate Bayesian reasoning by learning from the predictions of an optimal Bayesian system. The approach focuses on improving how models update beliefs as they receive new information during multi-step interactions.
By Daniel DominguezCloudflare Introduces Support for ASPA, an Emerging Internet Routing Security Standard
Cloudflare recently announced support for ASPA (Autonomous System Provider Authorization). The new cryptographic standard helps make Internet routing safer by verifying the path data takes across networks to reach its destination and preventing traffic from traversing unreliable or untrusted networks.
By Renato Losio
© 2026 Created by Michael Levin.
Powered by
You need to be a member of Codetown to add comments!
Join Codetown