I first integrated Groovy into a project I was working on almost two years ago. There is a long and rich history of using “scripting languages” as a flexible glue to stitch together, in different ways, large modular components from a variety of frameworks. Groovy is a particularly interesting language from this tradition, because it doesn’t shy away from linguistic sophistication in the pursuit of concise programming, especially in the areas around XML, where it is particularly strong. Groovy goes beyond the “glue” tradition of the scripting world to being an effective implementation language in its own right. In fact, while Groovy is often thought of and referred to as a scripting language, it really is much more than that.

It is traditional for scripting languages to have an uneasy relationship with the underlying linguistic system in which the frameworks are implemented. In Groovy’s case, they have been able to leverage the underlying Java model to get integration that is smooth and efficient. And because of the linguistic similarities between Java and Groovy, it is fairly painless for developers to shift between programming in one environment and the other.

Groovy in Action by Dierk König and his coauthors is a clear and detailed exposition of what is groovy about Groovy. I’m glad to have it on my bookshelf.

JAMES GOSLING

Creator of Java Sun Microsystems, Inc.