Richard Monson-Haefel explains why Groovy will be the dynamic language of the future:

The future seems obvious: Dynamic languages are growing in popularity and their productivity and broad applicability cannot be ignored. The Java platform is supported by a huge ecosystem of 4 million-plus developers and thousands of tools and APIs. If any dynamic language is to be successful it has to (a) be standardized (b) appeal to Java developers (c) be fairly easy to learn, and (d) leverage the existing Java ecosystem. There is only one dynamic language that meets those needs and that's Groovy.

Well, even within that theory he's ignoring the CLR and Iron Python - and given the far greater penetration of Windows than anything Sun is doing, it's a pretty big omission. But never mind that - let's go to the basic problem in the argument, as I see it.

The big complaint people make about niche languages is "what if I can't find developers?" Groovy does not solve that problem. Sure, it uses Java Byte code, but so what? Who programs in Java byte code? The argument fails for the simple reason that the platform - whilke important - is not the biggest issue in front of developers and their management. They worry about resources (i.e., staff) and interoperability. If they can get both, the VM being used isn't really much of an issue. Memory is now cheap, so chewing a few extra MB for another platform just isn't the problem it was a decade ago.

To take Groovy on specifically - it looks a lot to me like a checkbox item Sun did, and then promptly abandoned. "Dynamic languages on the JVM? Sure, we've got this Groovy thing!"

Never mind that there's almost certainly more Jython out there than Groovy. Richard has stumbled onto a solution for a problem that few people care about.