More Groovy Goodies
I've had quite a few people ask me to put together a follow-up article to my previous post titled What Makes Groovy So...Groovy, so, here it is. Here I'll take a quick look at integrating Groovy with Maven 2, using Groovy for web services, XML parsing, and Hudson's Groovy console integration.
What Makes Groovy So…Groovy?
Ever since attending the No Fluff Just Stuff symposium last month, I've been digging into Groovy, and have frankly been blown away. As I watched the presentations, and as I have done my own research, I have been blown away by Groovy's power. I'm convinced. I have to use Groovy. It's that good. I am, however, having a little trouble convincing others of its coolness. Maybe this will help others. Please leave your comments and let me know what you think. I wrote a blog about it. Here it goes!
As I dig deeper, I find that features of the language fall in to four basic categories:
- Wow! That's really groovy!
- Wow! That's really useful!
- Hmmm...that's good to know.
- Nice...but will I use it?
I will focus on the really useful, much of which is also very groovy, but as my boss might say, "groovy don't pay the rent." (He's kind of weird like that.)
No Fluff Just Stuff: Fascination and Frustration
I've always prided myself for always being on the leading, if not bleeding edge of technology. After a weekend at the No Fluff Just Stuff conference in St. Louis (NFJS), I'm starting to feel both fascinated and frustrated.
The sessions I attended were heavy into dynamic programming languages, and agile software development. The dynamic programming languages that we got deepest into were Groovy and Ruby. Both of these languages make the job of the developer exponentially easier, and are ideal for rapid application development. This in and of itself should be enough to convince developers to use it, but it gets better. Through the magic of dynamic programming, things become possible that were not possible before, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities that blow my mind.
The agile discussions focused on what's right, and wrong, with various agile processes. There were a lot of really great tips, and it was as good to hear about what we are doing wrong as it was to hear about what we are doing wrong.