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196

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4

Having used Java for some years already, we know what we are gaining by moving to Grails. The question is, what are we losing? Performance?

Appreciate your input / ideas.

Thanks.

+2  A: 

Groovy compiles to JVM bytecode just like Java. With Grails you end up with a .war file to run in your container just like Java.

Groovy has slower run-time performance to Java in most areas since it is a dynamic language. You can have java code in your Grails app in addition to groovy code.

Sean A.O. Harney
+2  A: 
  • "we know what we are gaining by moving to Grails", but are you sure?

  • Team experience Are you sure that the team "will get things done" easily+major customizations?

  • New employees? Grails is not that much used in the enterprise

  • Performance? Probably slower than Java

  • etc.

@aem++

A: 

You loose the experience you made with programming for a long time in java. And you need to get used to new frameworks etc.

Janusz
Groovy is syntactically very similar to Java. And has a lot of syntactic sugar that lets you do things in fewer lines than java.It is not that hard for a Java programmer to get used to groovy. Since it is a dynamic language some things are a little different than a statically typed language like Java.
Sean A.O. Harney
And you can call Java from Groovy and Groovy from Java. And Grails is built on top of Spring and Hibernate, which is pretty common in Java web development.
Nate
Yes, it will take less than a week for a Java developer to be up to speed with Grails. I recommend the book "Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Notice to Professional" by Apress publishing. Can be had on amazon for very cheap used.
Sean A.O. Harney
+1  A: 

I think the biggest issue is not the technical, but the manpower/skill issue.

A quick (non-scientific) job search on a job portal reveals 5 jobs mentioning Grails, and 15 pages for Java. Obviously this doesn't cater for candidates wanting to learn Grails etc., but when you're replacing staff and looking for people to maintain it, I suspect either you'll have difficulty finding people, or you will have to spend time getting them up to speed (I know it compiles to bytecode, I know it has Java-like idioms but there's still that time to factor in).

Brian Agnew