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

[Isak Rickyanto]

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

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-2]

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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> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

--
Graeme Rocher
Grails Project Lead
G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
http://www.g2one.com

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[Miguel Ping]

I'm guessing that if Grails releases a portlet plugin compatible with JSR 186 and 268, it will certainly be a huge attraction ;) I've heard of a jruby portlet plugin, but I guess it will be easier to implement it in grails, since spring already has good support for portlets

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:

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
>>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

--
Graeme Rocher
Grails Project Lead
G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
http://www.g2one.com

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[CastagnoR]

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Isak Rickyanto
<isak.rickyanto@...> wrote:

> 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...

Ruby appeared in 1995
Groovy appeared in 2003

Rails appeared in 2004 (based on previous work on Basecamp, so it's
obviously older)
Grails development started in 2005

Given this timeline, Groovy and Grails have done an incredible work.
In 4 years they created a complete new language, and a complete web
framework, ready for production.

Of course, more buzz would be nice, but that's not a priority.
Groovy/Grails mission imho is not to allow everyone to develop
applications, but to give java developers a dynamic and familiar
alternative to java, still staying in the big Java family.

Raffaele

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[Graeme Rocher-2]

On the subject of books, there are not only 2 books in 2008, we've
already had in 2008:

- Groovy Recipes
- Programming Groovy
- Beginning Groovy & Grails

Then of course there will be DGG 2nd edition and Grails in Action. Of
course this is not the same volume of books for Ruby, but remember
many of the books that come out for Java on subjects like Spring,
Hibernate etc. are also applicable to Groovy & Grails.

Cheers

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Raffaele Castagno
<raffaele.castagno@...> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Isak Rickyanto
> <isak.rickyanto@...> wrote:
>
>> 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...
>
> Ruby appeared in 1995
> Groovy appeared in 2003
>
> Rails appeared in 2004 (based on previous work on Basecamp, so it's
> obviously older)
> Grails development started in 2005
>
> Given this timeline, Groovy and Grails have done an incredible work.
> In 4 years they created a complete new language, and a complete web
> framework, ready for production.
>
> Of course, more buzz would be nice, but that's not a priority.
> Groovy/Grails mission imho is not to allow everyone to develop
> applications, but to give java developers a dynamic and familiar
> alternative to java, still staying in the big Java family.
>
> Raffaele
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

--
Graeme Rocher
Grails Project Lead
G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
http://www.g2one.com

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I also dont feel having a plethora of books is necessarily better. I
would prefer to have a single book, but very well written. If the
second edition of DGG is like the first, it will be perfect. The other
important aspect (and complement to books) is a up to date and solid
online documentation, which Grails has and keeps improving.

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:

> On the subject of books, there are not only 2 books in 2008, we've
> already had in 2008:
>
> - Groovy Recipes
> - Programming Groovy
> - Beginning Groovy & Grails
>
> Then of course there will be DGG 2nd edition and Grails in Action. Of
> course this is not the same volume of books for Ruby, but remember
> many of the books that come out for Java on subjects like Spring,
> Hibernate etc. are also applicable to Groovy & Grails.
>
> Cheers
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Raffaele Castagno
> <raffaele.castagno@...> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Isak Rickyanto
>> <isak.rickyanto@...> wrote:
>>
>>> 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...
>>
>> Ruby appeared in 1995
>> Groovy appeared in 2003
>>
>> Rails appeared in 2004 (based on previous work on Basecamp, so it's
>> obviously older)
>> Grails development started in 2005
>>
>> Given this timeline, Groovy and Grails have done an incredible work.
>> In 4 years they created a complete new language, and a complete web
>> framework, ready for production.
>>
>> Of course, more buzz would be nice, but that's not a priority.
>> Groovy/Grails mission imho is not to allow everyone to develop
>> applications, but to give java developers a dynamic and familiar
>> alternative to java, still staying in the big Java family.
>>
>> Raffaele
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>>
>>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Graeme Rocher
> Grails Project Lead
> G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
> http://www.g2one.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

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[mingfai]

I have been wondering for a long time how many people are actually working on Grails. It seems to me Groovy has a lot more resource than Grails. And I wonder if G2One should put more resource to the Grails project.

Another issue I observed is, number of Grails issues in JIRA is getting higher and higher over time. (and many closed issues are actually "won't fix")

From searching of the mail list archive and from my own experience, many questions to the user mail list are unanswered.

I would call Grails a complete web framework. It has many unique features that are much better than other Java web application frameworks, e.g. easy url mapping, tag lib etc. but i could hardly call it mature until it fix more bugs. It's understandable as it's 1.0.3 only.

I hope I am not sound like grumbling and I bet on Grails too and I definitely wish it to get better. It seems to me it's more meaningful to make further improvement on Grails before spending more resource in marketing.

Regards,
mingfai




 

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 Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Mingfai <mingfai.ma@...> wrote:
> I have been wondering for a long time how many people are actually working
> on Grails. It seems to me Groovy has a lot more resource than Grails. And I
> wonder if G2One should put more resource to the Grails project.

Agree on this, I have the same feeling. This may be due to the fact
that Grails is younger than Groovy though

>
> Another issue I observed is, number of Grails issues in JIRA is getting
> higher and higher over time. (and many closed issues are actually "won't
> fix")

Yes and that's a consequence of the first point I guess. I sure wish
the bug fixing rate would be higher, but for this more people need to
turn themselves into commiters. I myself cannot make this commitment,
so it's hard to complain too much :)

>
> From searching of the mail list archive and from my own experience, many
> questions to the user mail list are unanswered.

I disagree on this - I always seem to get pertinent answers to any
questions I may ask... The only answers I have seen that remained
unanswered are very noobie questions that indicated a lack of reading
of the documentation (and even those get answered most of the times),
and some questions about plugins as not many people may be
knowledgeable with a particular plugin.

 What specific question did not get answered, in your case?

Jean-Noel

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[Graeme Rocher-2]

Activity as slowed recently as two of the main committers (me and
Peter) are working on DGG second edition and Grails in Action
respectively. Books take time unfortunately. Once the main part of the
book writing is out the way (in a month or 2) activity will escalate
again

As for G2One we are always looking at ways to get more resources on
board for Grails, its a tricky balance supporting both the language
and the framework

Cheers

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Mingfai <mingfai.ma@...> wrote:

> I have been wondering for a long time how many people are actually working
> on Grails. It seems to me Groovy has a lot more resource than Grails. And I
> wonder if G2One should put more resource to the Grails project.
>
> Another issue I observed is, number of Grails issues in JIRA is getting
> higher and higher over time. (and many closed issues are actually "won't
> fix")
>
> From searching of the mail list archive and from my own experience, many
> questions to the user mail list are unanswered.
>
> I would call Grails a complete web framework. It has many unique features
> that are much better than other Java web application frameworks, e.g. easy
> url mapping, tag lib etc. but i could hardly call it mature until it fix
> more bugs. It's understandable as it's 1.0.3 only.
>
> I hope I am not sound like grumbling and I bet on Grails too and I
> definitely wish it to get better. It seems to me it's more meaningful to
> make further improvement on Grails before spending more resource in
> marketing.
>
> Regards,
> mingfai
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> 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
>
>

--
Graeme Rocher
Grails Project Lead
G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
http://www.g2one.com

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[Isak Rickyanto]

Of course i don't suggest the same strategy with Rails...

But i think Rails can improve and grow fast because their marketing strategy. After they can attract a lot of developers to join their camp, then the Rails itself will grow faster because will attract a lot of contributions and adoptions.

I also dunno what's the best strategy for Grails... because in Java world there are a lot of frameworks compared to Ruby world that Rails is the king.

I just emphasize that good marketing strategy is important because it will support Grails to become better platform.

Currently i think Grails no need to wait for all advanced features like JCR, Portlets to do marketing step... because i believe current grails is great product.
Beside that i believe outside there there are a lot of webdevelopers don't use those things. especially if webdevelopers outside from Java world, i am sure they don't know portlet or JCR :D so more important to tell them that Grails is easy for them and have a lot of magics inside he he he

It will be better if Grails can attract web developer outside of Java world.
The main problem for them i think is hosting platform that still more expensive in Java, specially compared to PHP. So beside technical improvement, we need some things and actions that can make Grails more popular, maybe free hosting for Grails open source projects :D

In the PHP world, excellent open source product like Joomla, Drupal support the growth of PHP. That is example of other thing beside technical improvement that can boost Grails. For now, I still can't find great open source product that can be marketed for the mass that built with Grails, so support for open source products that built with Grails is good strategy.
If there is great open source product in Grails so I can tell anyone that product is made with Grails ;D

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:59 AM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:

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

--
Best regards,
Isak Rickyanto, ST

I did not know Peter was also involved in the book writing - nice to know.

As for the balance, I agree it's tricky and leave the choice out to
G2One. However, since 1.5 I would call Groovy quite mature (now most
work seems to go to optimizations, etc), whereas Grails is only at 1.0
now and it shows :)

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:

> Activity as slowed recently as two of the main committers (me and
> Peter) are working on DGG second edition and Grails in Action
> respectively. Books take time unfortunately. Once the main part of the
> book writing is out the way (in a month or 2) activity will escalate
> again
>
> As for G2One we are always looking at ways to get more resources on
> board for Grails, its a tricky balance supporting both the language
> and the framework
>
> Cheers
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Mingfai <mingfai.ma@...> wrote:
>> I have been wondering for a long time how many people are actually working
>> on Grails. It seems to me Groovy has a lot more resource than Grails. And I
>> wonder if G2One should put more resource to the Grails project.
>>
>> Another issue I observed is, number of Grails issues in JIRA is getting
>> higher and higher over time. (and many closed issues are actually "won't
>> fix")
>>
>> From searching of the mail list archive and from my own experience, many
>> questions to the user mail list are unanswered.
>>
>> I would call Grails a complete web framework. It has many unique features
>> that are much better than other Java web application frameworks, e.g. easy
>> url mapping, tag lib etc. but i could hardly call it mature until it fix
>> more bugs. It's understandable as it's 1.0.3 only.
>>
>> I hope I am not sound like grumbling and I bet on Grails too and I
>> definitely wish it to get better. It seems to me it's more meaningful to
>> make further improvement on Grails before spending more resource in
>> marketing.
>>
>> Regards,
>> mingfai
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> 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
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Graeme Rocher
> Grails Project Lead
> G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
> http://www.g2one.com
>
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> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

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[BrockHeinz]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 5:51 AM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:
> Activity as slowed recently as two of the main committers (me and
> Peter) are working on DGG second edition and Grails in Action
> respectively.

... It may be beneficial for G2One to encourage those who open JIRAs
to provide a patch (where appropriate).

Brock

> Books take time unfortunately. Once the main part of the
> book writing is out the way (in a month or 2) activity will escalate
> again
>
> As for G2One we are always looking at ways to get more resources on
> board for Grails, its a tricky balance supporting both the language
> and the framework
>
> Cheers
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Mingfai <mingfai.ma@...> wrote:
>> I have been wondering for a long time how many people are actually working
>> on Grails. It seems to me Groovy has a lot more resource than Grails. And I
>> wonder if G2One should put more resource to the Grails project.
>>
>> Another issue I observed is, number of Grails issues in JIRA is getting
>> higher and higher over time. (and many closed issues are actually "won't
>> fix")
>>
>> From searching of the mail list archive and from my own experience, many
>> questions to the user mail list are unanswered.
>>
>> I would call Grails a complete web framework. It has many unique features
>> that are much better than other Java web application frameworks, e.g. easy
>> url mapping, tag lib etc. but i could hardly call it mature until it fix
>> more bugs. It's understandable as it's 1.0.3 only.
>>
>> I hope I am not sound like grumbling and I bet on Grails too and I
>> definitely wish it to get better. It seems to me it's more meaningful to
>> make further improvement on Grails before spending more resource in
>> marketing.
>>
>> Regards,
>> mingfai
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> 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
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Graeme Rocher
> Grails Project Lead
> G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
> http://www.g2one.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

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[mingfai]

re. mail list reply, probably I'm biased. when I got one or two post unanswered, and found one or two post in the archive that I have deep interest but unanswered, some perception is formed.

Be fair, a lot of works have been done, and it's quite amazing to have developed Grails to the current stage with such limited resource. Recently I found something very motivating when I look at build history as I saw that the number of failed test case of Groovy-Grails joint-build is reduced from 131 to 6, (it's true until 1 hrs ago :-P ... i keep watching as i have been longing for using Groovy 1.6 with Grails since the day 1.6 beta 1 is released...) and you guys are working hard and your efforts are very much appreciated.

As Groovy and Grails are getting more popular, more and more people are making their living on it. No sure if it's reasonable or not, we do wish the works get done sooner. I wonder if Alex Tkachman and Guillaume would watch this thread and you guys may consider a "community request" to lend some resource from the Groovy team to, say clean up half of the outstanding issues in Grails, given that Groovy is rather mature now. For groovy, the issue open to close ration is 400:2400 and it's 1000:1000 for Grails. Quite unbalanced.

Please keep up the good works. Thank you.

Regards,
mingfai

http://bamboo.ci.codehaus.org/build/viewBuildHistory!default.action?buildKey=GRAILS-GROOVYGRAILS

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:

Activity as slowed recently as two of the main committers (me and
Peter) are working on DGG second edition and Grails in Action
respectively. Books take time unfortunately. Once the main part of the
book writing is out the way (in a month or 2) activity will escalate
again

As for G2One we are always looking at ways to get more resources on
board for Grails, its a tricky balance supporting both the language
and the framework

Cheers

[Joel Reed-3]

Graeme Rocher wrote:
> 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.
>  
I think this is a great strategy and eagerly await the JCR integration.
As a developer at a startup that has chosen Grails for our web stack,
the rich feature set built-in and provided via the extensive plugin
library was a key deciding factor for us.

jr

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[JamesPage]

Grails exists to attract Java developers who are
used to choice and is competing with a number of other web frameworks.

I think that can be broadened.  Groovy is not that hard to learn. Maybe you are limiting yourself to much by aiming Grails/Groovy (GG) just at ex Java hands.

James

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Joel Reed <joel.reed@...> wrote:

Graeme Rocher wrote:

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.
 

I think this is a great strategy and eagerly await the JCR integration. As a developer at a startup that has chosen Grails for our web stack, the rich feature set built-in and provided via the extensive plugin library was a key deciding factor for us.

jr

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[mpermar]

Got this thread a bit late. Sorry but some criticism here:

I would personally prefer if the strategy was to improve user experience, performance and specially tools support for attracting developers. I already can use JCR, Portlets and JPA in grails thanks to Spring support. That is the great thing on Groovy and Grails. Grails is a great framework that I have been using for months. But still, the more I use it, the more I have a sweet and sour feeling. On one hand there is a great productivity intrinsic in the framework, on the other hand I can see how all this productivity is wasted with a very poor IDE/tools support.

My personal opinion is that improving the IDE support (not really in the groovy/syntax area but specially regarding building, running and debugging), improving performance (well done on last releases), improve application lifecycle and groovy+java integration, management, additional tools, monitoring, etc. would be much much more value and would bring many more developers to the platform than adding hooks to use something that developers could probably already use.

Best Regards,
Martin

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Joel Reed <joel.reed@...> wrote:

Graeme Rocher wrote:

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.
 

I think this is a great strategy and eagerly await the JCR integration. As a developer at a startup that has chosen Grails for our web stack, the rich feature set built-in and provided via the extensive plugin library was a key deciding factor for us.

jr

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[Helmut Denk]

mpermar wrote:

on the other hand I can see how all this productivity is
wasted with a very poor IDE/tools support.

sadly enough, i must agree with that. esp. true when using
eclipse. progress on this field is slow although the plugin-developers
do a good job.

more support for groovy from the eclipse foundation would help a lot.

[baton22]

ditto +1 for eclipse support

Helmut Denk wrote:

mpermar wrote:

on the other hand I can see how all this productivity is
wasted with a very poor IDE/tools support.

sadly enough, i must agree with that. esp. true when using
eclipse. progress on this field is slow although the plugin-developers
do a good job.

more support for groovy from the eclipse foundation would help a lot.