Re: What is the Grails strategy to spread buzz like Rails did?

The strategy for Grails cannot be the same as Rails. Rails was able to
ride the wave of having an entire vocal community (Ruby) united around
a single framework. Grails exists to attract Java developers who are
used to choice and is competing with a number of other web frameworks.

Our strategy is hence very different. We're aiming on developing as
many features that attract Java developers to the framework as
possible. Integrating with key Java specs like JCR, Portlets, JPA etc.
are all high on the agenda as it is these technologies that will
attract new developers to Grails.

Cheers

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Jean-Noël Rivasseau <elvanor@...> wrote:
> Im my opinion, Rails had a lot of luck. I don't deny the fact that
> they did invent something refreshing and new (CoC) and that they wrote
> a cool framework. But given the scalability problems (and other
> problems: each platform has problem of its own), it always comes as a
> surprise to me that *so much* buzz was generated. The amount of buzz
> is clearly incredible, tons of startup are betting on RoR and tons of
> jobs are out there for RoR.
>
> In contrast, Grails buzz is quite low I agree. But on the long term
> it's not clear that Grails cannot be as successful as Rails. The
> problems are different though, the Java world is filled with web
> frameworks and competition is tough. Some of these frameworks are of
> excellent quality (going Spring 2.5 only without Grails is an
> excellent choice too I believe - the excellent Java support in Eclipse
> compensates the loss of dynamicity of Groovy).
>
> What I really think is that Grails cannot be successful in the same
> way as Rails. Personnally my hope is that Sun will notice Grails and
> throw a lot of support behind it and Groovy. Seems unlikely however,
> they wanted to profit from the Rails hype and threw resources at JRuby
> instead. I believe it is / was an error though as Grails is *much*
> more adapted to the Java ecosystem. Better for Sun to use its own
> strengthes (the Javaecosystem has the most quality libraries, better
> performance etc) than try to adapt the success of another language and
> framework.
>
> Given the current state of things, I feel the best course of action
> for G2one / Grails community is to keep improving the stability and
> features of the framework, and look out for possible partnerships with
> interesting companies or communities. For example, a deal with Spring
> source could boost Grails a lot (not sure they would agree as the
> frameworks compete somewhat with each other). A deal with a company
> willing to write an excellent Grails Eclipse plugin would also attract
> a lot of people (not everybody wants to use JIdea - me included :)
>
> At last, dont forget that Grails is *already* successful. Many new
> installations, already stable/mature enough, excellent (and I do mean
> excellent) community support, interesting features: that's a list
> quite a few Java web frameworks would envy. As a startup developer
> that bet my company on Grails, I dont have fears about the platform I
> chose, only confidence. The only "dangerous area" I can see for Grails
> is that I sometimes get the feeling that the framework is really well
> known only by Graeme. In open source there is a saying that goes about
> how you should avoid having parts of the code that only one guy knows
> and understands fully. In Grails I feel a lot of areas are mastered
> only by Graeme, which makes him absolutely vital to the health of
> Grails :) Hopefully this situation will improve too however, as people
> like Peter Ledbrook as hired by G2One, and we will have also maybe
> have commiters coiming from the community, really knowing the
> internals of Grails. Disclaimer: I dont read the Grails developer ML,
> so this statement may not be completely accurate, it's just the
> feeling I get for reading this ML.
>
> Jean-Noel
>
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Isak Rickyanto
> <isak.rickyanto@...> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I found this url:
>> http://rubyworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/wow-very-huge-list-of-upcoming-rubyrails-books-in-2008/
>>
>> A lot of Rails books that will be published at at 2008-2009.
>> But as far as i know only 2 books will be published for grails:
>> Grails in Action and Definitive Guide to Grails second edition...
>>
>> Also a lot of Rails jobs there,
>> But if i checked grailsjobs.com,  very rarely updated.. only 2 new jobs for
>> this July
>> The worst, until now grails.org/jobs only posted 1 job :(
>>
>> I think Grails need to be marketed and making more buzz
>>
>> So I think it will be good for Grails buzz to build video site like in
>> Railsenvy.com
>> or create popular service like Twitter that make Rails more popular or make
>> online book with new philosophy in software development like
>> http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
>>
>> So i hope there is plan or strategy from Grails company like G2One to make
>> Grails more Holy ;D
>> I like grails and i just started to contribute using my blog
>> grailsdeveloper.com and maybe in the short time i will contribute in grails
>> plugin development...
>>
>> I also have positive thing from cakephp, the popular framework in PHP
>> area.., i like that they have http://bakery.cakephp.org/ that provide
>> articles, tutorials, behaviors, plugins in one place that help developers to
>> be more productive
>>
>> In my opinion, I believe Grails have bright future, but maybe need some
>> actions from community or maybe support from big vendor to make it brighter.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Isak Rickyanto, ST
>>
>
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--
Graeme Rocher
Grails Project Lead
G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
http://www.g2one.com

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