Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java (Pragmatic Programmers) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I absolutely love this book. I have no idea how it would read for a newbie, but as a developer well-versed in Java and very familiar with Groovy, this is an incredibly empowering book.

I own and have studied, and liked, 4 other Groovy books, but since I am not using it full-time yet, I tend to forget just the stuff I would like to have at my fingertips just when I need it. Reading the other books is kind of like looking at a new car in the showroom: you see the features, but not much more. This book is like taking a test drive on a race course: you immediately experience the power of using it like it should be used.

The subtitle for this book could be: How to do incredibly useful things *immediately* with Groovy. As the author says in chapter 6, he's not a sys admin, but Groovy makes it almost enjoyable to do all the sys tasks a developer has to handle all the time.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Will it teach you Groovy from the beginning, will it teach you the internals? I don't know, all I do know is that each page tells you how to do something you need to do, how to do it quickly and easily, and it tells you in a way that clarifies a lot of what I have read in other books.

This is one of the most useful books I have ever read since K&R.

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Product Description:

Groovy and Grails give you the power of the Java platform together with the flexibility and dynamism of a scripting language. Pick one of the many example projects in this book: at first you'll scratch your head and ask, "where's all the code?" Then you'll smile as you realize that Groovy allows you to write code the way you always thought you should. You will never look at Java the same way again. Groovy Recipes is targeted at the busy Java professional who needs quick solutions to everyday problems. Each recipe shows a concise code example right away. If you need more information, each recipe is explained in plain English. Nearly every aspect of the development process can be sped up using Groovy. Groovy makes mundane file management tasks like copying and renaming files trivial. Reading and writing XML has never been easier with XmlParsers and XmlBuilders. JDBC gets a fresh makeover. Breathe new life into Arrays, Maps, and Lists with a number of convenience methods. Even Ant gets turbo-charged. You can mix Groovy right into your build.xml, or replace it completely with code from an AntBuilder. As an added bonus, this book also covers Grails. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can have a first-class web application up and running from ground zero. Grails includes everything you need in a single zip file, a web server (Jetty), a database (HSQLDB), Spring, Hibernate, Sitemesh, even Ant. If you're looking for Ajax support, Grails ships with leading libraries like Prototype, script.aculo.us, Yahoo UI, and Dojo. We cover everything from getting a basic application up and running to advanced features such as deploying to other webservers and databases, adding a Captcha, integrating with legacy EJB applications, and even adding a Google Map.

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