Re: Groovy performance: what to do

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> Guillaume Laforge schrieb am 19.02.2008 12:25:
>
> Hi,
>
> > This is an interesting experiment.
> >
> > However, as this has been discussed on this list a few times already
> > or at the last Groovy Developer Conference, it's better and saner to
> > make Groovy the fastest dynamic language possible on the JVM by
> > creating the best second generation MOP, rather than by adding a few
> > hacks to make Groovy a more statically typed language.
> >
> > What would happen if such a proposal was committed?
> > In a few months from now, all Groovy code samples we would come across
> > would be littered with @Typed annotations all around -- who remembers
> > the ugly @Property annotation making your Groovy beans ugly?
> > A few months later, and people will wonder why this is not the default
> > behavior and be applied to all possible methods or classes.
> > Groovy will become more and more statically typed, and for
> > "performance sake", we'd imagine other such hacks to make Groovy less
> > and less dynamic over time, or littered with ugly annotations.
>
> I'm not sure if this is really true. So far, there's plenty of Java
> programmers out there who would *love* to use Groovy if there was more
> compile time checking involved. But, and I understand that, that's not
> possible as long as everything is super-dynamic.
> It's not that I don't appreciate that, it's very very nice. Really. But
> as even a typo in a variable goes unnoticed by the compiler, it's
> annoying compared to Java to prototype an algorithm.
> So, sometimes, it would be nice to make the compiler more strict, so
> that less things go unnoticed into runtime failures.
> I can speak only for my colleagues and me, as we currently use yet
> another "alternative" language for Java development, and as syntax is
> already very similar, a switch to or coexistence with Groovy would be,
> given the possibilities of Groovy, very nice.
>
> To emphasize my point: It's less the speed (though welcome, but we are
> not doing raw numeric calculations anyway), it's the convenience and the
> confidence of getting the source through compile stage (we are not using
> an IDE) and being able to concentrate onto the algorithm itself. Maybe
> we should think about the @Typed annotation as tip to the compiler for
> stricter checks? Or we rename it and leave it to future compiler
> versions to optimize differently according to this setting?
>
> At least, we have to pick up the majority of java programmers where they
> currently are, and not where you wish them to be. I'm a strong advocate
> of Groovy and use it wherever I can and urge others to do the same. But
> given a bridge to static typed minds to get to Groovy dynamic worlds
> would help them come over...

>
> - --
> Patric
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