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Groovy: Alive, but Barely Kicking


By Alex Handy
January 15, 2007 — 
Is Groovy still relevant now that the Java platform has embraced scripting languages? With the first release candidate of Groovy arriving last month, one might expect that the language is proceeding according to plan, but one of the language’s original architects believes that Groovy’s place in the Java world is strictly that of a trailblazer.

When developer James Strachan began working on Groovy back in 2004, he and his colleagues, Richard Monson-Haefel and Geir Magnusson Jr., were striving to prove that languages other than Java could live inside the Java platform. Monson-Haefel and Magnusson submitted the specification to the Java Community Process in March of that same year, and Groovy started life as JSR 241.

But as time passed, interest in the project waned. Strachan, who started out as the specification lead, left the project, and as 2006 bore down with no official updates in sight, the Groovy team sought a new leader.

That new leader was Guillaume Laforge, a French programmer, and while he’s been an undeniably energetic guide for the project, the Groovy and Grails (Groovy on Rails) projects are still languishing in relative obscurity when compared with other scripting languages that have recently come to the JVM.

“Groovy is not just a pale copy of an existing language,” said Laforge, who expected the final 1.0 version to be released at the end of December. “Groovy’s been thought [of] and designed for integrating natively with Java applications. It shares the same programming model.... The learning curve is rather flat when you’re a Java developer because of Groovy’s Java-like syntax.”

‘HASN’T JELLED’
But despite the best intentions of Groovy’s developers, Monson-Haefel has already thrown in the towel on the project. He compared Groovy to an idealistic politician, unable to execute on a lofty goal, but laying the groundwork for future successes.

“The fact is, the language just really hasn’t jelled,” said Monson-Haefel. “It’s not surprising, if you look at programming languages. It takes years for them to be really developed. When we pushed this through the JSR, my objective as executive was to open the public’s eyes to the fact that more than one language can be executed on the Java platform. I think that succeeded.”

Monson-Haefel cited JRuby, Jython and the Mozilla project’s Rhino JavaScript for Java as examples of how Groovy’s attempt has influenced the evolution of the platform.

“We had hoped Groovy would be the first, but what happened is, all of a sudden the floodgates opened up,” said Monson-Haefel. “People said this is a real possibility. What I think Groovy did [was], although it didn’t succeed at all [as a language], it did succeed at saving the Java platform from dynamic languages. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”


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