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I'm surprised to see that Groovy slightly beats Kotlin in on that graph. I really underestimated Groovy popularity, or overestimated Kotlin. I've yet to work w

I'm surprised to see that Groovy slightly beats Kotlin in on that graph. I really underestimated Groovy popularity, or overestimated Kotlin. I've yet to work with Kotlin but did like Groovy some years ago. Never used it professionaly though, only for play-projects.

chii 9y ago
groovy is great. It doesn't have much marketing behind it, so it's seems to be a bit of a quiet achiever. But for dsl makin', groovy is such a good language.!
- Insanity 9y ago
  I should perhaps check it out again. It's been years since I've used it, but did enjoy it when I did.
  - fithisux 9y ago
    Groovy deserves better. But its tight couple with JVM eliminate the possibility of native or JS.
- olavgg 9y ago
  We use Groovy in production, working with SQL, Transactions or JSON is much easier than Java. Meta programming and Traits are other advantages. The biggest advantage is that it is so similar to Java code, that any Java developer can pick it up and understand it immediately. We still love and use Java a lot and they both complement each other very well.
  - crazypyro 9y ago
    We use Groovy at my work in a majority of our projects as well. I love traits and some of the other shortcuts and I don't feel like I'm too far away from Java that I couldn't work in it immediately.
  - vorg 9y ago
    > it is so similar to Java code, that any Java developer can pick it up Perhaps Java 7, but Apache Groovy doesn't have the lambda syntax from Java 8. Development on Groovy has stagnated -- someone even contributed a fully working Antlr-4 based parser to replace their outdated Antlr-2 based one last year, but it's been sitting in their development repository at Github going nowhere ever since.
izacus 9y ago
Is it possible that it's skewed because Gradle (build system used for pretty much all Android applications and many standard Java applications) uses Groovy as it's configuration file language? Causing a misdetection (e.g. most Android Kotlin projects would show up as Groovy as well) ?
m12k 9y ago
Maybe Gradle is the 'killer app' that keeps Groovy popular? I've heard from people with tricky build tool requirements that it's one of the best options out there.
- aweiland 9y ago
  I see Groovy in 3 places: Gradle files (a Kotlin alternative is coming), Jenkins pipeline build scripts, and the Spock testing framework. I don't have a good read on how popular Grails is anymore. I liked it a lot in the past but I don't need it anymore with Kotlin and Spring Boot.
  - joemccall86 9y ago
    We've stuck with Grails for a few years now and I still prefer it over vanilla Spring Boot. Things like JSON views and GORM are still really nice to have.
  - vorg 9y ago
    > Gradle files (a Kotlin alternative is coming) Gradle's been able to use Kotlin for build files since Gradle 3.0 which was released last year. For Jenkins, only a subset of Apache Groovy can be used. None of the functional methods will work when used. Grails 2.x is still around, but virtually no-one's converting their projects to version 3, or starting new Grails projects in version 3. Groovy development has come to a standstill, and even contributions from outside developers just sit there, such as the new Antlr 4-based parser which someone contributed a whole year ago.
    - cutler 9y ago
      Kotlin has its own build system - Kobalt.
tigershark 9y ago
Groovy has the best testing framework that I have ever used, Spock. When I write .Net code I really miss it, there is nothing that I found as powerful, even using F#.
- dvlsg 9y ago
  What do you miss that's not in F#? Legitimately curious, since F# is the language I miss (or wish to use, I suppose) the most at the moment.
  - tigershark 9y ago
    It's the overall experience that is great. Creating a stub or a mock with just: IMyService myService = Stub() // Mock() Returning something from the stub: myService.getData() >> data verifying the returned value without explicit assert: result == expected (This will show a very informative error in case of mismatch and gives you the ability to see the differences in a diff style window) Interaction based testing is a breeze with this: 3 * myService.getData() 1 * myOtherService.getData() And finally the data driven testing is the most natural that I have ever seen. You just need to literally create a table and use the column name in your test or even in your test title. Writing tests becomes a joy with Spock. In F# I have looked at expecto, fsunit and some other library, but I can't find anything remotely equivalent.
nilidah 9y ago
It always blows my mind when everyone seems to forget Groovy. Especially since Kotlin is very very similar (well, syntactically anyway). The difference of course is that Groovy has full Spring support, Gradle, Spock etc.
fithisux 9y ago
The killer feature of Groovy is Spock tests. It really shines there.
- sorokod 9y ago
  sincerest form of flattery? http://spekframework.org http://spekframework.org
  - vorg 9y ago
    Kotlin-based Spek uses standard lambdas for defining specs, whereas Spock digs into the Apache Groovy parser to change the meaning of labels in the syntax, as well as uses operator overloading. One's elegantly functional, the other's a cheap hack.

chii 9y ago

groovy is great. It doesn't have much marketing behind it, so it's seems to be a bit of a quiet achiever. But for dsl makin', groovy is such a good language.!

Insanity 9y ago
I should perhaps check it out again. It's been years since I've used it, but did enjoy it when I did.
- fithisux 9y ago
  Groovy deserves better. But its tight couple with JVM eliminate the possibility of native or JS.
olavgg 9y ago
We use Groovy in production, working with SQL, Transactions or JSON is much easier than Java. Meta programming and Traits are other advantages. The biggest advantage is that it is so similar to Java code, that any Java developer can pick it up and understand it immediately. We still love and use Java a lot and they both complement each other very well.
- crazypyro 9y ago
  We use Groovy at my work in a majority of our projects as well. I love traits and some of the other shortcuts and I don't feel like I'm too far away from Java that I couldn't work in it immediately.
- vorg 9y ago
  > it is so similar to Java code, that any Java developer can pick it up Perhaps Java 7, but Apache Groovy doesn't have the lambda syntax from Java 8. Development on Groovy has stagnated -- someone even contributed a fully working Antlr-4 based parser to replace their outdated Antlr-2 based one last year, but it's been sitting in their development repository at Github going nowhere ever since.

izacus 9y ago

Is it possible that it's skewed because Gradle (build system used for pretty much all Android applications and many standard Java applications) uses Groovy as it's configuration file language? Causing a misdetection (e.g. most Android Kotlin projects would show up as Groovy as well) ?

m12k 9y ago

Maybe Gradle is the 'killer app' that keeps Groovy popular? I've heard from people with tricky build tool requirements that it's one of the best options out there.

aweiland 9y ago
I see Groovy in 3 places: Gradle files (a Kotlin alternative is coming), Jenkins pipeline build scripts, and the Spock testing framework. I don't have a good read on how popular Grails is anymore. I liked it a lot in the past but I don't need it anymore with Kotlin and Spring Boot.
- joemccall86 9y ago
  We've stuck with Grails for a few years now and I still prefer it over vanilla Spring Boot. Things like JSON views and GORM are still really nice to have.
- vorg 9y ago
  > Gradle files (a Kotlin alternative is coming) Gradle's been able to use Kotlin for build files since Gradle 3.0 which was released last year. For Jenkins, only a subset of Apache Groovy can be used. None of the functional methods will work when used. Grails 2.x is still around, but virtually no-one's converting their projects to version 3, or starting new Grails projects in version 3. Groovy development has come to a standstill, and even contributions from outside developers just sit there, such as the new Antlr 4-based parser which someone contributed a whole year ago.
  - cutler 9y ago
    Kotlin has its own build system - Kobalt.

tigershark 9y ago

Groovy has the best testing framework that I have ever used, Spock. When I write .Net code I really miss it, there is nothing that I found as powerful, even using F#.

dvlsg 9y ago
What do you miss that's not in F#? Legitimately curious, since F# is the language I miss (or wish to use, I suppose) the most at the moment.
- tigershark 9y ago
  It's the overall experience that is great. Creating a stub or a mock with just: IMyService myService = Stub() // Mock() Returning something from the stub: myService.getData() >> data verifying the returned value without explicit assert: result == expected (This will show a very informative error in case of mismatch and gives you the ability to see the differences in a diff style window) Interaction based testing is a breeze with this: 3 * myService.getData() 1 * myOtherService.getData() And finally the data driven testing is the most natural that I have ever seen. You just need to literally create a table and use the column name in your test or even in your test title. Writing tests becomes a joy with Spock. In F# I have looked at expecto, fsunit and some other library, but I can't find anything remotely equivalent.

nilidah 9y ago

It always blows my mind when everyone seems to forget Groovy. Especially since Kotlin is very very similar (well, syntactically anyway). The difference of course is that Groovy has full Spring support, Gradle, Spock etc.

fithisux 9y ago

The killer feature of Groovy is Spock tests. It really shines there.

sorokod 9y ago
sincerest form of flattery? http://spekframework.org http://spekframework.org
- vorg 9y ago
  Kotlin-based Spek uses standard lambdas for defining specs, whereas Spock digs into the Apache Groovy parser to change the meaning of labels in the syntax, as well as uses operator overloading. One's elegantly functional, the other's a cheap hack.