On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 06:04 -0600, phil swenson wrote: [ . . . ] > Groovy is the closest to this.... VMWare now owns groovy development > (major backer). Gradle and Grails are the "killer applications". IDE > support is quite good. It is fairly similar to Java and has excellent > Java integration.
Just to emphasize: VMWare pays people to work on Groovy (and Grails) but it doesn't own the Groovy language. > But critically, it lacks static typing and performance. This has to be challenged, indeed the whole concept of Groovy as replacement for Java has to be challenged. Groovy is an unashamedly dynamically typed language, to change this is to destroy Groovy. Furthermore, Groovy is unashamedly a symbiote to Java, Thus Groovy does not lack static typing, though it almost certainly does lack performance on processor-bound activity, but then its job is to be used in more i/o bound activity where instruction execution performance is irrelevant. OK so Alex Tkachman has created Groovy++ which is a compiler shim to apply static typing and hence replace the metaobject protocol of Groovy with full compilation to bytecode -- which makes Groovy code as fast as Java code. This is not an either or though, it just adds a third element into the mix Java/Groovy/Groovy++. Works for me. > Sadly, no other alternative comes close IMO. So we seem to be stuck > with java the language for the foreseeable future. Why "stuck with"? OK so Java sucks in so many ways, but it is actually fairly reasonably in so many. I find the Groovy/Groovy++/Java and excellent way of working. Dynamic language for DSL-ish things, and where you actually want the meta-object protocol, Groovy++ for a language that is as neat and concise but statically typed and fully compiled, and Java because most of the extant infrastructure is written in that language. Why do we have to have just one language? -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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