Customer Reviews

Groovy Programming: An Introduction for Java Developers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Short, plain, concise presentation of all features of Groovy, much in K&R style, without too many words and too much philosophy. I have both books, i.e. this one and "Groovy in Action". "Groovy in Action" concentrates on design goals and philosophy, and is more about using the language than about language itself. Reading "Groovy in Action" is fun, but when I do programming I have "Groovy Programming" on my desk all the time. And use it quite frequently.

By the way, the previous review here misses the point. Reviewer reviews Groovy, but not the book. Pity that he doesn't unserstand what are scripting languages and how they are used.

As I write this review there appear to be two books on Groovy: this book ("Groovy Programming") and "Groovy in Action". I would recommend you read both books, but tackle "Groovy Programming" first.

"Groovy in Action" was recommended at a conference I attended, so I started with that book. Although it has wonderful writing and explained the "why" of Groovy quite eloquently, I found it hard to quickly get into the Groovy language as I read that book. Details of APIs and language features were scattered about in the text, so you can't easily jump in and quickly learn about a topic. You have to read it straight through - and it is quite verbose.

Programming Groovy is, on the other hand, a straight-forward exposition of the language itself. You actually *can* read it straight through and make rapid headway since it is so concise. So to get going quickly, try "Groovy Programming."

Too many books on dynamic languages (including the one on Groovy from the Pragmatic programming series) seem to be written from the point of view of over-compensating inferiority complexes about traditional system languages on the part of their authors.

This one, thankfully, is not. It does not pretend that dynamic languages in general, or Groovy in particular, are some kid of magic bullet for all problems. Instead, Groovy is presented clearly and concisely as a valuable tool for come classes of problems.

Having read the Pragmatic book and this one, I would say that this is * definitely* the one to buy. My only complaint is that the Kindle edition is so expensive.

Hi,

My biggest issue with the book is that you can not obtain the associated code.

I get "access forbidden" when attempting to access the "supporting website",
[...] (documented in the preface
of the book on page xviii).

So ... you must type in all the code from the book yourself, which seems
unacceptable to me for 2009.

There are many things to like about the book, but the code issue I think is large.
You should not be having to type in reams of pre-created code to follow a book example.

-Jay

Some of the material is a little dated but overall this is an excellent primer on Groovy.