Part 1. Up to speed with Groovy

Welcome to part 1: “Up to speed with Groovy.” This section is made up of four chapters, covering topics that are independent of any particular application. In the first chapter I try to help you make the business and technical case for Groovy. The second chapter is a tutorial by example in how to use Groovy to solve small but interesting problems. Combined with appendix B it should give you the Groovy background you need to understand the rest of the book.

The third chapter reviews how closely Groovy and Java work together. It covers running Groovy scripts programmatically from Java, as well as other ways the two languages can be mixed. The easiest way to integrate the two languages is just to make classes in each, instantiate them, and invoke their methods. This chapter provides examples of doing exactly that.

The final chapter in this part reviews idiomatic Groovy features that can be particularly helpful when working with Java problems. From POGOs to AST transformations to the Groovy JDK, this chapter shows many ways that Groovy can simplify Java development.