Foreword

When we designed the Groovy language almost 10 years ago, our main goal was to create a language that is a complement to Java, a close companion, that Java developers would be familiar with and could learn easily. The idea was to empower users to be more productive by removing the boilerplate of Java, and to simplify their programming lives by giving them compelling and straightforward APIs to work with. I’m proud to say that the Groovy team attained that goal, making Groovy the most popular alternative language for the Java platform.

Along the way, and by virtue of its nature, Groovy was adopted by Java developers in a number of ways. For example, it was introduced in Java projects for testing purposes, because the Groovy syntax is light and readable but still resembles that of Java. For interacting with XML payloads, web services, or databases, Groovy provides handy and elegant wrappers around the Java Development Kit that make those tasks a breeze. And for writing business rules in Java applications, Groovy shines, thanks to its metaprogramming capabilities and its concise and expressive grammar.