The good thing about Groovy is its likeness to Java, and reading Groovy code should pose no difficulty to a seasoned Java programmer who’s taken a days worth reading. The problem with Groovy is writing good code. Not because you do it wrong, but you can always write it better! As with Ruby, there are alot of nifty features in the language that shortcuts ugly code in Java. But, you have to know that these features exists before you can use them. Grails? It just might become the next dogma in Java application development!
This is the litterature list and resources I’ve used in my pursuit of becoming a Groovier developer:
Groovy in Action (GiA)
- Great for getting started with Groovy
- Reference manual to the nifty stuff in the language
- Well written with good examples
- Short introduction to grails, that is hard to follow
- Good follow up to GiA
- Covers some details better than GiA, like Grails and Meta Programming
- After reading GiA and developing some Groovy code, I could easily skip much of it’s contents and read through the book in half a day
Getting started with Grails – Webcast
- Hour long webcast
- Good starting point for Grails!
Getting started with Grails – Book
- Thorough introduction to creating your first Grails application
- Covers Grails in more detail than most of what I had read up until then
- Largest benefits when reading this book early
- 120 pages shouldn’t scare anyone
Resources on the Web
- A necessity followup after reading GiA and Groovy Recipies
- Could be more thorough
- I have a sneaky suspicion that the Groovy crowd hangs somewhere else and feed off a different source of information
Grails main documentation
- grails.org the natural place to start
- Because navigating the site is a mess, i recommend using Grails Confluence Wiki instead!
- NICE!
- +1
- May be confusing to first find information in grails.org documentation, later understanding that its outdated, and the updated version is in the reference manual
- Lively mailing list.
- I had to sign off it after a week due to inbox flooding
- Use the mailing list Archive until you need to post something
- Maven plugin for building Groovy code
- RECOMMENDED!
- I have mixed feelings for this plugin, it is the best alternative for Mavenizing your Grails project for the moment, but don’t expect to beeing able to have a nice multimodule project
- Acts as a wrapper around ant tasks
- Can package a grails plugin in a Maven cycle
IntelliJ with its JetGroovy plugin
- Improves the quality of working with Groovy.
- Still has some sharp edges, but not worth waiting for 2.0
- A good excuse for jumping on the Groovy/Grails Bandwagon
News on Grails
Books not bougth/read
- I read Groovy Recipies in stead…
- Give me a recommendation
The Definitive Guide to Grails
- Waiting for the 2.0 version to be released in Q4 2008
