Getting Started With Groovy
Groovy is a superset of Java. It's dynamically typed and great for scripting and testing legacy Java code. In this article, we point out the basics of what Groovy is and why it makes sense to use Groovy moving forward.
What exactly is Groovy?
Groovy is a scripting language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It is considered both object oriented and dynamic in nature. Groovy offers both static and dynamic typing, offering developers the best of both worlds in terms of compiled vs interpreted languages.
Anything written in plain old Java is valid Groovy code. Additionally, Groovy provides a lot of syntactic sugar that makes writing Java more fun. Groovy reduces the amount of boilerplate code needed to write traditional Java classes and objects. It also automatically includes things like java.io and java.util which improves development time and makes Java (arguably) more fun.
Why use Groovy?
Groovy adds a lot of benefits as a scripting language. Groovy easily allows Java developers to write maintenance scripts and is great for testing.
Groovy is also well known for it's role in the popular Grails framework, a web application framework written entirely in Groovy. If you've ever used Grails for web app development, then you've already seen the benefits Groovy has to offer.
Conclusion
Groovy makes traditional Java development faster and more fun. It offers a dynamically typed approach to traditional Java and has access to everything we love about the Java ecosystem. It's important to remember that Java classes are Groovy classes. Groovy simply provides an easier, more dynamic way to write Java and is especially good for scripting and testing Java apps.
