Maximum PC

You want to read something really cool? Groovyis dynamic. Groovyis interpretted. Groovyis runs on a standard jvm. And Groovyuses the Java library!!! Plus, I probably left off 5 more cool features. This is awesome! You can mix it with Java in the same program. Like Python, you don't need a main, or javac (you can just type 'groovy myprogram' and it will run), but if you want, you can go full OOP w/ it if you would like. Take that .NET, you ain't got no Groovy!

I'm definitely going to learn this language. OMG, I so hope it replaces JavaScript. I couldn't dream of a better thing for html/xml pages.

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/l ... xw07Groovy

So that brings the Java platforms language count to 6 (I believe - did I miss any?):

Java
AspectJ - an aspect oriented version of Java
Python/Jython
Ruby/JRuby
Smalltalk

and now there is Groovy!

Oh yeah, Sun is also working with one of the labs on a Fortran like language for scientific computing applications - that whole N1 grid computing thing.

You know what.... I think there might be a JLisp too. I'll check later. So now when someone asks what I did last night, I can truthfully say that I got my groove on.

WOW.

That looks hella sweet.

I'm going to spend some time using it this weekend...... I so hope I can use this in place of Javascript.

Nice! It's like weird combination of Python, Ruby, and Java. It's almost as if they took the essence of Jython, JRuby, and Java and put it all together and said "dude, that's groovy" and then called it as such the adjective they described.

This is definitely cool, and please continue to fill us in. I recently made the decision to drop C# from my list of languages to learn and replaced it with Java. Groovy is definitely going to be there.

Interesting lang and I'll have to check it out while I'm learning java.

But...

Am I the only one that cringes at the thought of a interpreted language built ontop of an interpreted language? Yes I know the java vm is very well built and runs almost as quick as a true compiled language but still you have to admit it's silly building a language ontop of a perfectly good language...

I guess I'm just have flashbacks to the mid-late 90's hanging out on usenet and watching the flame wars every time some newbie would ask for help making a BASIC interpreter inside BASIC.

I used too, but no more. Actually, these scripting languages are used to extend the language in of itself. Scripting languages (at least from what I've seen of them) is used as a "glue language", i.e., they are used to extend the project by allowing them to do things that are otherwise too difficult to do in the language you are coding in. A good example of this is Lua, Lua was used for the AI in the game Far Cry so much so that while the graphics is written in C++, much of the AI and whatnot used Lua. Lua is another cool language, but never really cared enough to learn it.

Tools like Python really help out C++ developers, IMHO. You can use C++ for modules that need performance or modules that are either not available in Python (like a good MySQL module). You can use Tkinter in Python for your GUI and the underlying parts written in C++ for speed. Scripting languages really help (which is part of the reason I'm breaking away from .NET is the lac of good scripting languages) extend languages further, in the case of Java, Groovy will further extend Java. How will it extend, well, I'm not sure since it's new and Gadget just posted it. Scripts help out development a lot.

Hopefully someone else hasn't answered this while I've been going on a murderous rampage here at the college (long story).

It probably isn't actually an interpreter built on top of the JVM. Here is my impression w/o having read the developers docs....

a) The Groovy source code can be compiled into Java bytecode and ran in the JVM just like regular Java, which means that this code has the potential to become machine code if the JVM decides to compile it.

b) You can run it using the Groovy interpreter ('groovy sourcefile.groovy'), which afiak, takes the JVM completely out of the loop, yet gives developers the same Java API to use. It is possible that the interpreter is written in Java, but I would bet it is written in C probably and was probably constructed with the usual suspects (lex, yacc, etc).

c) You can start the interpreter and use it like a shell similiar to Python and Lisp, which is a nice way to diddle around trying to figure out a short algorithm or do some sysadmin stuff.

Just my initial impressions from what I've read so far..... I'll have some more time this weekend and we'll see what is what then.