In retrospect I don't think Groovy fits into my co...

2009-08-13T17:44:51.900-05:00

In retrospect I don't think Groovy fits into my concerns about Polyglotism. For one it is a superset of Java. It also uses the same class libraries as a Java application.

My blog was more targetted at Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, C/C++ where the installation, packaging, libraries, and syntax are different.

Nice to hear from you Scott, maybe your example wi...

2009-08-06T15:18:11.242-05:00

Nice to hear from you Scott, maybe your example will inspire me to start writing some blogs again. It sure does take a bit of time to write a well composed and well thought out blog entry. Well at least it does in my case.

I noticed the article on polyglot programming and while the article could have done with less inflammatory comments at the beginning, he makes a series of valid points. I think if you notice my reply to that article in the comments section, you will see that you and he are not necessarily on opposing sides.

The fact is that there will not be 500 different JVM languages in use a few years from now, mainly for the reasons he lists in his blog. Those that survive are those that leverage new and effective programming practices with less boilerplate and those that facilitate the transition from normal Java language development to that new language. The languages that survive will be first class citizens in the Java platform, I think that Groovy and Scala will probably win in that regard. Yes, this means I think that jLisp (Clojure), Jython and others will never move beyond being niche languages. (The only exception I think that might hold true is JRuby, mainly because of the serious efforts to support it on the JVM and the large community it has on its own.)

This is for two main reasons I think. First, as you and I well know, it is hard to develop tooling for a language, so the *market* if you will will settle on a few languages to support. Those languages will get the cool tool support (read IDE support) and others wont. Second, the learning curve matters. It wont do to try to have part of your code base in jLisp or Ruby and the rest in Java. Why? Am I some non-polyglot ugly Javanian? Am I some kind of wuss that can't learn additional languages? No, its that why do I need to learn not only Ruby, but the Ruby idioms, when I can leverage something like Groovy that feels natural and I can focus on the coolness of the new feature that Java lacks? In other words, I try to be lazy in the good way, not that bad way.

I look forward to your new blog posts, because you and I know that Groovy does not fall into the trap that Mr. Bill states in his blog. In fact, I want to encourage something, don't call using Groovy with Java as polyglot programming, because it isn't really. I think that Groovy is not so much a Java language, but a Java dialect. A far more productive one.

Comments on def groovy: Delivering Business Value Through Polyglot Systems...

In retrospect I don't think Groovy fits into my co...

Nice to hear from you Scott, maybe your example wi...