Book review: Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional

Z Jacek Laskowski - Wiki Projektanta Java EE

Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional by Christopher M. Judd , Joseph Faisal Nusairat , Jim Shingler (Apress, Jun 2008)

At the time I started reading the book I thought that all the hype about scripting languages and their frameworks, esp. Ruby on Rails was just a temporary fuss and I should not have had to expect much. I considered Groovy and Grails as a new toy built by and for Java programmers who were tried of those lenghty projects off their budget and time. I was following a couple of blogs about the topic and the more I read about the features of Ruby and Rails and its alternative Merb the more I thought it's time to see what's available outside Java EE technology stack yet still atop JVM. As a Java SE and EE enthusiast I didn't mean to invest much time in delving into Ruby or PHP so it was quite a natural choice to choose Grails. It's based on Groovy which is a JVM-based dynamic language, uses Hibernate and Spring Framework and hence it has all one could expect in a Java-based web framework. With those new catchy terms like closures and convention over configuration skimming over my head I found myself ready to read Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional. And I was pleasantly surprised when I finished it after a week (while doing a review of each chapter on my blog) and every time I got back to the next chapter of the book I expected to find more information about Grails and the other open source projects it's based on. It was worth its time. I don't remember a technology book I read from cover to cover. I had never quite understood the fuss about closures and dynamically generated methods, but the book's authors explained it very clearly. 13 chapters ranging from Groovy introduction to very advanced GUI builders overview with lots of examples did a good job introducing me to Groovy and Grails. I even think I'm ready to start a project with it! And I can't wait for one. What's frustrated me is that I can't think of any projects that would not be developed with Grails. Not only did the book introduce Groovy and Grails, but the entire plugin ecosystem around Grails. The authors proceeded with all necessary caution to explain the features of other open source projects that allowed Grails plugins extend the Grails platform with additional features. Each and every functionality you'd expect from a modern web application is likely described in the book. The authors were so enthusiastic about Groovy and Grails's strength that once you read it it will be impossible to find a place where they don't fit. If you're advanced in other technologies and don't want to start over again with a new one don't read the book - it will ruin your life with a thought that Groovy and Grails can do everything. It probably won't, but I can't find one to prove it...(un)fortunately (I'm really scared I might become a single-technology addict).