Book Review - Making Java Groovy by Ken Kousen
19 Nov 2013 Share on:
Making Java Groovy certainly makes Java groovy. It is a fantastic technical book that I have come across in long time with plenty of use cases. A technical book should talk less and do more and this is the book that does the same.
This book covers every aspect of programming covering lots things in development, build process and testing using lots of use cases that will interest you. The books repository on Github maintains the source code used in book. Most of the time, I tried to work on the development part on my own and only referred to the source code in the book in case I was stuck or was lacking any ideas to complete the code. The book attempts not to critique Java and evangelize Groovy. Neither it tries to get his readers abandon Java and start using Groovy for all their work. Instead the book attempts toward making Java easier and the developer more efficient.
Before reading the book, I knew that Groovy is a language that runs on JVM and is very close in syntax to Java and therefore is easy to learn. But after reading the book, I know that Groovy is not only easy to learn but also make Java easy to develop. For eg: I have worked extensively on Java and I know the pain it is to work with XMLs. Groovy makes working with XML easier. Groovy adds new capabilities to existing Java classes which makes it possible to write a better and cleaner code in Groovy avoiding all the boiler-plate that Java is infamous for. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1 is called Upto Speed with Groovy has a four chapters and is a great start for anyone who has never worked on Groovy before. Part 2 is called Groovy Tools that covers Build Proces and Testing. Part 3 is called Groovy in the Real World which deals with integrating Groovy with Spring Framework, Database access, RESTful web services and Building and testing Web applications using Groovlet and Grails.
Though the book is not written for complete beginners in Groovy but the book will be liked by beginners as well as it is essentially Groovy in Practice with a better name. :)
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to work on Groovy.
My rating 5/5.