From languages like PHP, Ruby, Groovy and Java all the way through to Apache and High Scalability explained. All that is required is that you must be a registered DZone member and you can download the documents for free. There is over 50 reference documents, so it is well worth the effort.

I found it all surprisingly simple, even though it would be safe to say I have almost ZERO Java experience or knowledge. I found it all very intuitive and well explained, although I should add that I have not yet completed the entire exercise.

I’m using Netbeans as the IDE of choice and it is pretty impressive! At first I found the project structure a little confusing as it is different to the Grails file system.

Found that all I need to do to see the Grails file system is to click on the Files tab in the project window.

I pretty much followed the instructions in the book I downloaded. I’m sure it would get harder and more tricky, but so far so good. I’m loving it already! Now the trick would be finding more time for playing…

Internet users are increasingly looking for answers to their search questions, not just a list of sites in response to a query.

We’ve grown accustomed to knowing how to optimize our search queries, simply to get the best result. Then you have to deal with the overeager SEO experts who have optimized the least ideal sites for the highest result, resulting in frustration. Lets not go into that other than saying searching is not finding answers.

To find answers, the best place to go is probably a social network. You ask a question, you find answers or at least the best route to the answer. If the humans on the other end of the network don’t know, they normally know of someone who does.

This is what happened to me on Twitter the other day. I was looking into the Groovy programming language and although Google returned a myriad of absolutely great results, it was not a quick answer to my question. In fact, Google’s results raised much more questions for me, so you can understand my frustration :/ As if I need more questions :P Instead a friend of mine on Twitter @geniusboywonder said I should talk to @aslamkhn about Groovy and suddenly I’ve got immediate and relevant answers to my n00b, dumb questions without reading through tons of sites. Exactly what I was looking for! I’m happy.

The interesting part of all this is Google realizes that this is a trend in search behavior. Who could have ever thought that there would come a day when the almighty Google have to be concerned about their search product. Whether you think they are concerned or not, they did raise the issue, which indicates that they are taking it serious. It should be really interesting to see what they come up with :)

That is as defined in my beloved and trusted Mac Dictionary. I have to do a little Java project soon. Not because I want to, because I HAVE to for Afrigator. Don’t get me wrong, I think Java is great and powerful. I have a healthy dose of respect for it. Problem is, I’ve never done anything remotely formal in Java. The only experience I have with it was when I checked it out about 6 years ago. Safe to say, I’m a n00b.

The problem is that I’m quite busy these days. Time and energy is not much for attempting learning a mammoth like Java.

Hello, Groovy! Groovy is a dynamic language specifically for the Java platform. Groovy is built for the JVM, making it easy for Java to integrate with Groovy vice versa. In Netbeans, they went a far as not even having an option to create a Groovy project. You create a normal Java project and then add Groovy classes to it. That is how tightly it seems integrated, which is good news for a n00b like me :)

The syntax itself seems very close to that of Ruby. Lets look at these examples (from the excellent article by Gerald Bauer – Groooooovy Babe: Jazzing Up Plain Old Java)

Here is some Java code

import java.util.*;

public class HelloWorld
{
  public static void main( String args[] )
  {
     List country = new ArrayList();
     country.add( "Canada" );
     country.add( "Austria" );
     country.add( "Brazil" );

     Collections.sort( country );

     for( Iterator it = country.iterator(); it.hasNext() )
        System.out.println( "Hello " + it.next() );
  }
}

The same in Groovy ( note the code reduction compared to Java :) )

country = [ 'Canada', 'Austria', 'Brazil' ]
country.sort
country.each { println "Hello ${it}" }

And in Ruby

country = [ 'Canada', 'Austria', 'Brazil' ]
country.sort
country.each { |country| puts "Hello #{country}" }

To top it all off, they even have their own Rails-like web framework called Grails (Groovy on Rails). I’ll check that out in due time.

All in all, Groovy feels much more comfortable and familiar to me. I’m looking forward to this little challenge and will probably write about it as I go along. Aslam Khan assured me that it is solid and he even have some Groovy code out there in the wild in production which is comforting! That and knowing someone who is an expert to ask for advice when the going gets rough, since I’m fairly sure it will get rough due to n00bn3ss!