Why use Groovy today?

Groovy is perhaps best known for filling gaps and removing pain points for Java developers. But it also added some of its own features and was also inspired by ideas from Smalltalk, Python, Ruby, Clojure, Frege, Scala, Whiley, C#, Swift, Kotlin, Lombok and elsewhere.

Groovy's feature set and extensibility compared to Java was a compelling selling point for the language when it was first designed. At the time, Java had numerous gaps compared to other languages, and was evolving slowly. Fast forward to today, where Java is evolving much more quickly, you may wonder does Groovy have to offer developers today?

This talk looks at Groovy features which aren't yet in Java, how to gain access to Java features but on much earlier JDKs, and also places where Groovy adds significant value to existing Java features.

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