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by dion.
Original Post: Microsoft view of JavaOne
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Eric Gunnerson was in the same position that I was in when I went to Microsoft TechEd a month ago. It was my first time at a Microsoft conference, and I was actually impressed.
Eric seems to be impressed with some parts of JavaOne too, including the community aspect that Java has (which is of course a double edged sword).
It is especially interesting to read about his thoughts on Groovy and AOP.
Groovy is a new scripting language (well, they call it an agile dynamic language, but I prefer the term scripting) for the Java platform. I attended this with some interest as I've written a lot of Perl, and I understand the value of such languages.
However, as a semi-professional language designer, I'm not sure about groovy. Their goal is to be Java-like, but they've also added a lot of improvements that result in Groovy being a weird cross between a simple scripting language and a high-powered research language. For example, closures and operator overloading are not things that one would expect in a simple language.
I didn't see a lot of evidence of rigor in the language design. That may be okay for the target audience, but I think it may lead to a confusing set of features and weird interactions.
I obviously disagree here :) Although I like the goal of being "Java-like", I actually don't mind having Groovy be different, else you may as well use Java (or BeanShell, or ...).
Closures are just so useful, that I think they SHOULD be in the language (including Eric's C# one ;)
Eric: Try playing with Groovy a little, and you will want Groovy.NET ;)
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