theJavaJar.com

I do not know where to start. 2GX was an incredible event that really sparked my interest in Groovy, Grails, Open Source development, and my passion for technology. First, Jay Zimmerman and the No Fluff Just Stuff staff and presenters really did a great job putting on an impressive event. The organization and setup of 2GX left you only worrying about one thing, attending the conference and getting as much out of it as you could. I basically didn’t have to leave the hotel and I barely slept at night(less than 4 hours each night). If there would have been presentations or BOF until 12am, I would have probably been there.

What I have taken from the conference or software symposium is that Groovy/Grails is not just a quick fix for Java Web development. With the power of ExandoMetaClass (create synthetic methods/properties), Duck Typing(walks like a duck, quacks like a duck: it is a duck), and static typing support inherited from Java, Groovy is the next generation of Java. In fact, the “next generation of Java” phrase came up quite frequently at 2GX. I think I have decided that would be the way to introduce and approach management and stakeholders with the power of Groovy.

Grails is not just another Web framework. It actually relies on Spring’s Webflow to handle the MVC pattern and Grails really is a development platform that “sits on the shoulders of giants” -Scott Davis, like Spring, Hibernate, and Quartz. The power of Grails is coding by convention but it also has the integration with proven technologies like Spring and Hibernate that force you to answer, why re-invent the wheel? Throw in Grails’ plug-in framework and you have modular and component based code that makes maintenance and releases have less impact on your enterprise software stack. The power of Java is platform independence and flexibility which has always driven my interest in Java. Now we have Groovy and Grails which can take advantage of everything we know and love in Java, like the hundreds of libraries already handling everything from logging to persistence, and include a very dynamic and flexible approach to what we have done in the past with fewer lines of code.