Who is this book for?
Although this book is somewhat intended for those with a Java background, anyone with basic programming skills could benefit from it. This book is a data-filled, yet easy-to-digest tour of the Groovy language and ecosystem. Now at Apress
This book covers:
- Groovy basics, including the GDK
- Advanced Groovy, such as writing Groovy DSLs
- Functional programming in Groovy
- GPars, the built-in concurrency library
- Gradle, the build system
- Grails, the web application framework
- Spock, the testing framework
- Ratpack, the reactive web library
Groovy is a flexible open-source language built for the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) with a Java-like syntax. It can be used dynamically or statically-typed, your choice. It supports functional programming constructs, including first-class functions, currying, and more. It has multiple-inheritance, type inference, and meta-programming.
Groovy is very similar in syntax to Java so it is generally easy for Java developers to learn (Java code is generally valid Groovy code). However, Groovy has many additional features and relaxed syntax rules: closures, dynamic typing, meta-programming (via metaClass), semicolons are optional, regex-support, operator overloading, GStrings, and more. Groovy is interpreted at runtime, but in Groovy 2.0 the ability to compile to byte-code and enforce type-checking were added to the language.
Praise for previous works:
If you're just getting to Java 8, I definitely recommend @adamldavis' book -- very concise and helpful. -Fred Jonsson
"bought both of your books (Modern Java & Modern Programming) and let me tell you, what a great value and extremely good content" - Rozzot
