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0 pointsvorg7y ago0 comments

> The JVM is a highly-optimized, cross-platform, garbage-collected environment on which people have built much more progressive languages that lack the syntactic baggage of Java: Scala, Groovy, Clojure, Kotlin.

Apache Groovy has inherited all of the syntax of Java. When Jeremy Rayner built the Antlr 2 based syntax for Groovy back in 2005, he began with the syntax for Java, then added the Groovy-specific grammar to it. The latest version of Groovy still uses that syntax, so if Java has syntactic baggage, then Groovy has it too.

I'm picking Groovy will still have that baggage-laden syntax for a while yet. 2 yrs ago, Daniel Sun built an Antlr 4 based replacement grammar, but the Groovy project managers at Apache are taking their sweet time in rolling it along. They even had its optional preview removed from the version 2.6 beta of Groovy.

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_bxg17y ago

I wasn't aware of Groovy's roots, but that doesn't diminish the point. It elected to take on Java's baggage; the JVM didn't impose it.

spricket7y ago

No idea that Groovy was designed by the guy of Antlr fame... Pretty humbling TBH.

Check out Kotlin though. It's seriously great and doesn't share lost of the performance penalties of Groovy

olavgg7y ago

Groovy with static compilation is very fast and memory efficient. In most cases it is equal to Java. Though you are supposed to use Java and Groovy together for maximum performance and developer productivity. Groovy is not a replacement for Java, but rather an extension

ptx7y ago

What makes Groovy unsuitable as a replacement for Java, if the performance is now comparable?

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zmmmmm7y ago

> doesn't share lost of the performance penalties of Groovy

That's a bit of a myth these days. Groovy may even be more performant than Kotlin when used with static compilation.

dmux7y ago

The new parser is available in the Groovy 3 alphas.

vorgOP7y ago

The Apache project managers removed the new parser from the Groovy 2.6 betas over 6 months ago after officially canceling it and saying Groovy 3 would be the next release. But no real work has been done on Groovy 3 since then. I'm guessing they really intend releasing version 2.6 some time in the future. Perhaps they'll say "Groovy 3 is still far off and Groovy needs another release, so let's resurrect Groovy 2.6". Don't expect to see Groovy 3 move beyond alpha version anytime soon.

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