As an example, Grolifant is a library for allowing Gradle plugins to
maintain compatibility over wide range of Gradle releases. Currently
this range is Gradle 4.3 - 8.5. Public interfaces are written in Java,
but 99% of implementations are done in Groovy. Anything Groovy & public
is statically compiled, but sometimes under the hood (read private
methods), dynamic methods are required to deal with changes in the
Gradle API. Trying to do that with Java or Kotlin as an implementation
language will be a nightmare. Groovy is really good for some stuff!
On 30/12/2023 19:57, Christopher Smith wrote:
I typically use Groovy in its static mode, and the single biggest
value to me is the AST-transformation system. However, there are cases
where I find dynamic mode very useful.
1. Methods that handle processing for particular subtypes of a base
type. I could do something like a class-based map with, and I do in
cases where I need pluggability, but for the case of "I have these 4
types of incoming message and need to convert them to a target
format", using dynamic dispatch on a top-level method results in much
clearer code than a giant switch or hand-written reflection.
2. Quick-and-dirty processing of data structures. REST calls usually
return JSON these days, and if I know that I just to pull some simple
data out of a nested structure, it's much easier to use dynamic mode
against a Map than to try to write a bunch of mapping classes.
3. Spock and Geb. I have managed to convince consulting clients that
stick to plain Java only for the business code to adopt Spock for
testing because it's so powerful and clear. Spock is the Groovy
equivalent of an IOCCC winner, and it showcases the dramatic lengths
you can (and nearly all of us shouldn't) go to.
On Sat, Dec 30, 2023 at 12:17 PM Agile Developer
<fithis2...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I was a 4 years user of Grails/Groovy (last year mostly Python).
With the general trend of people moving to static languages, is
there any reason that Groovy needs to stay dynamic?
I see Python having the mypy approach, I see gradle moving to
Kotlin and FE mostly on Typescript.
I understand that the @CompileStatic is the supported method, but
having true static typing (with the Script-Like enhancements other
Languages added, would be beneficial).
Is there still a reason to keep it dynamic? What is the benefit?
--
Dr. Vasileios Anagnostopoulos (MSc,PhD)
Researcher/Developer
--
Schalk W. Cronjé
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