Year of Dynamic Java?
Posted by Joseph Nusairat
Every year brings with it new technologies, this year is of course is no different. One of the biggest changes I have seen this year (which did not really hit ‘till the end of the year) are some of the dynamic language features in Java, specifically Groovy.
Groovy has come a long way and with the 1.5 release over the weekend brings new meta-programming capabilities and better support for DSLs. All of this is supposed to help the Grails framework. And if you have used both you will really see the Ruby influence mixed with Java standards (there are of course many additions since this is a 1.5 release -from 1.0-.
The real power I see is with Groovy's being supported 100% in Grails (of course) and even in JBoss Seam. Besides Seam just being a good tool to bridge the gap between JSF and EJB3 it has quite a bit of support for ease of development when doing jBPM (JBoss' business process management system which can use Drools as part of its decision making process).
I think next year will be interesting to see if (now that the Java dynamic languages have reached good maturity) whether Groovy will really start to grow in the Java community. The NoFluffJustStuff tour has even branched off with a G2 (Groovy and Grails) tour as well.
At any rate, whether you are a Java, Ruby, or Python developer ... the exponential spread in popularity over the last 2 - 3 years of using dynamic languages via DSLs is great for the community. Let's see what 2008 brings.