Today, I had a chance to attend local user group IT Booze. It was the second meetup and it was very interesting, because of topics which were under discussion: Scala, Clojure And Groovy. I love such events especially in my town. :-)
I'd like to share my reflections regarding these cool languages.
As you know these languages are very popular on JVM (of cause not so popular as Java :-). And I'm sure every passionate Java/JVM developer has been thinking "what's the Next Big Language". It's really hard to choose the next one.
So, here is a short "brain snapshot":
- Scala and Clojure are great languages with huge amount of interesting features, but to master them we need to use Scala (or Clojure) on daily basis.
- Scala appeared as complex language. I think it requires a steeper learning curve then Clojure or Groovy. It means we must invest much, much more.
- Clojure has lisp syntax, but innovative concurrency concept is worth to look into. I say lisp, because it might be a stopper for someone to evaluate it as a next big language.
- Clojure and functional programming require to "patch" our way of thinking. And it can be difficult.
- Groovy is agile language. We (Java developers) can start using it right away. I think we should invest more in Groovy just to boost our productivity in: scripting, testing, automation routine work, etc. It doesn't require big investments and we can learn as we go.
- start using Groovy
- look into Clojure concepts
- postpone Scala for now
Todays ITBooze was great. Three wonderful talks, each worth a thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteRobert Martin thinks that The Next Big Language really *might* be Closure. The reason is being multiparadigm and concurrent by nature.
You might want to check out his talk at this year NDC
http://www.ndc2011.no/agenda.aspx?cat=1071
http://ndc2011.macsimum.no/SAL7/Onsdag/1020-1120.wmv
Thanks for this link. Uncle Bob was very convincing, as usual ;-)
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