Groovy Fundamentals

[Will Myers]

Hi,
How easy is it to learn Groovy comapared to something like Python?

[Marco Ehrentreich]

Hi Will,

I'd say it depends on your background and experience. If you already have experience with Java than it's surely easier to learn Groovy as it uses the same tools and APIs and the syntax is very similar to Java (but more lightweight).


Marco

[Will Myers]

Hi Marco,
I have 10+ years experience with Java and have played around with Python, Scala, and Clojure...so many technologies, so little time!

[Marco Ehrentreich]

Then it should be very easy for you to learn Groovy because Groovy is (almost) a super set of Java, so you don't have to learn a completely new syntax. It's also very easy to mix Java and Groovy so that you can always use the right tool for the job because both languages have their strenghts and weaknesses. And of course this makes it easy to gradually migrate from Java to Groovy as you can at first use Groovy only for the parts it makes most sense (for example to write tests).

Marco

[Kenneth A. Kousen]

Groovy is essentially the next generation language in the Java family, so if you know Java it's easy to learn Groovy. As the previous commenter said, too, you can add Groovy incrementally to existing Java systems.

If you don't know Java but do know another OO language, then learning Groovy is still straightforward.

If you don't know any object oriented languages (and an increasing number of developers in my training classes fit that category), then you do have that hurdle to overcome, but at this point that process is pretty well understood.