A Groovy kind of love

It’s funny, but before working on the Groovy project, there was a song I’ve always liked: A Groovy Kind of Love, by Phill Collins. Do you think it was premonitory? That I’d work on Groovy? And speaking of Groovy love… I’ve come across some nice love messages towards Groovy that I wanted to share with you.

Jorge Lugo, a software engineer in the Washington DC area, sums up pretty well the appeal Groovy has to Java developers:

Why I like Groovy
I became interested in Groovy recently when I discovered that it is like Ruby, but is meant for the Java language and platform. Groovy provides Ruby-like features with out having to abandon the Java language, frameworks and tools that I’ve been using for years.
[…]
In Conclusion, Groovy is a great language. I hope to use it more often in the future.

I hope Jorge will attend the 2GX conference, as it’ll be a tremendous opportunity to dive into Groovy and Grails!

Rob Breidecker, who lives in St-Louis, MO, USA, is learning Groovy and seems to pretty much like what he’s learned so far:

Giving Groovy a Chance
Last year I learned Ruby and Rails and found them to be fun to program in and also very productive. I was in particular very impressed with how well thought out Rails was. After years of programming Web applications I could see the power of automating many of the unpleasant and mundane tasks that go along with Web development.
Since Java is still my bread and butter, I am spending time this year learning Groovy and eventually hope to start learning Grails. So far I like what I have seen with Groovy. It shares many of the language features of Ruby and is very easy to install (especially if you already have a JVM installed on your machine). I also get to use all of the existing Java classes I am already familiar with, so I am able to be productive with Groovy right out of the gate. Is there anyone out there playing with Groovy and would like to share what kinds of real world things are you doing with it?

For Java developers, it’s obviously way easier to learn a language like Groovy with its Java-like syntax, and because it’s leveraging all the APIs, tools, frameworks you’ve learned to master over the time. Same for Grails, with its Spring and Hibernate background. Betting on Groovy and Grails is the best way to protect your investment.

And probably the best and funniest love message at the end, mostly in time for the Valentine’s day, by Carlos Orrego:

I am married to Java, but i have a lover… Groovy
Java has been there for me many years. Solid, stable, reliable, mature, old… I know java well, i think she knows me too.
Then i met Groovy. Young, sexy, dynamic, agile… I am getting to know Groovy, i am getting butterflies in my stomach again.
The best things is that they get along just fine. They even talk together in harmony.
What else can i say?

That’s a Groovy kind of love!