Yesterday I spent some time looking at Groovy again, but this time in detail.
After spending a few hours reading the Groovy website and playing with some examples I was quite impressed, not only with the language - but especially with it's interoperability with the existing Java environment. It certainly offers improvements over the existing language without leaving the Java 'platform'.
This is when I started to think of Java as a platform, as opposed to a language. ie. the Java VM and standard API being the platform, and the Java syntax being the language. Separating the two like this lets one think of additional languages, like Groovy, as being alternative 'languages' to the same platform, as opposed to being an extension or a competitor to Java itself.
After a bit of googling I noticed that James has had similar thoughts in this direction as well.
In summary, I can only think that Groovy will do good things for Java, since 'platform' reusability is so easy and bidirectional, which is <austin-powers>sooo groovy baby!</austin-powers> :)
Posted by crafterm at March 19, 2004 03:00 PM | TrackBack