
The Groovy Conundrum - llambda
http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/the-groovy-conundrum/240147731
======
vorg
This article's concluding paragraph...

> The endless variety of features requires considerable documentation, which
> is simply not available, especially for the advanced features that give
> Groovy much of its benefit. And so, if you jump in today, you'll find the
> language is easy to learn, but hard to master. Fortunately, this limitation
> is not incurable. However, time is of the essence as Groovy's principal
> competitor for the hearts and minds of Java developers — Scala — has a
> small, laser-focused company behind it, which revs the product frequently
> and generates considerable documentation. If Groovy acts soon, it can retain
> leadership among Java alternatives. If not, it will have to resign itself to
> being an also-ran.

The author is missing the point of Grails and Groovy's business model. A lack
of usable documentation means developers must pay for SpringSource consultants
and seats at conferences, where lots of money is made and divvied up. The
Groovy "Bible" didn't bring in much profit for its authors so why should they
bother with a 2nd edn? Grails and Groovy is about making money _now_ for those
involved, not investing it. Even the "groovymag" charges money for an online
subscription, while the "Week with Scala" is free! If someone seriously
creates independent doco for Groovy, the next version of Groovy would change
slightly to lessen the value of the doco and increase the need for a
consultant or conference.

The author does correctly conclude that Groovy will soon be an also-ran
because of that business strategy. Rod Johnson, former CEO of Grails company
SpringSource, is now leading the board of that laser-focused Scala company. He
no doubt understands the value of "taking a cut of a huge pie" instead of
"owning all of a tiny pie", and is investing in growing Scala instead of
strangling it. The project managers behind Groovy, Graeme Rocher and Guillaume
Laforge, are probably incapable of changing their ingrained habits to steer
Groovy in a new direction.

