It's Official: Grails has a DZone Refcard!

The Grails Refcard is now available for download at http://refcardz.dzone.com

Writing a refcard was a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. The main difficulty being determining what it should have in it. I put the question out here and on the Grails mailing lists and got some good ideas but no help in narrowing it down. Should it be solely a reference for experienced Grails users? An easy getting started guide for new Grails users? Should it just be a copy of the docs in a smaller font?!

I leaned more towards it being a reference for existing users but I know there are still many poor souls out there who don't yet know how much better their jobs could be with Grails. So, I settled on a hybrid approach. The first section is a brief introduction to Grails and some of it's key benefits. I could have done so much more here but hopefully it's enough to convince those not yet using Grails to take a second look. The rest of the card is dedicated to some of the concepts and details that I and others I know of have had to lookup most frequently. I know I didn't hit everyone's key points but hopefully I covered enough of them to make it useful.

Download it and take a look. The download is free and feedback is always welcome.

I would like to thank the folks at DZone for giving me this opportunity and even more for their support of the G3 community with first the Groovy Refcard and now the Grails Refcard. There's no Griffon Refcard yet, but they do listen so send them an email to let them know you'd like to see one or better yet, offer to write it. It's a fun and challenging experience.

Grails Enterprise Integration Strategies BOF

I will be leading a Grails BOF (Birds of a Feather session) this Thursday at JavaOne.  The BOF is from 6:30 to 7:20 pm in Esplanade 307-310.  

I hope to make this more like a traditional Birds of a Feather.  I will get the ball rolling by talking about some of my experiences using Grails in an EJB/JSF/Oracle/WebLogic shop and also a bit about ideas I've heard from others in other enterprise environments.  But then we'll open it up to the attendees to talk about what they've tried. What worked.  What didn't.  What they're currently dealing with.

Hopefully, we'll get a good discussion going and then to cap it all off, the Grails Podcast BOF, with Sven Haiges and Glen Smith is in the same room at 7:30.  It should be a GR8 night!  If you're at JavaOne come on out and join in.

Groovy Buzz at JavaOne

As suspected the G3 buzz at JavaOne is much higher than indicated by the technical session list.  You hear it in the hallway conversations; you hear it in the attendees questions at other sessions; and you heard it loud and clear at the Scripting Bowl (aka, the Alternative JVM Languages Bowl).  The contenders were Jython, Groovy, Clojure, Scala and JRuby.  The clear winner was Groovy!  Dick Wall, of Java Posse fame, came in second with Scala but based on audience feedback Groovy was the one!  

Guillaume Laforge was the Groovy representative and he showed off some cool demos with help from the grooviest guys in desktop development, Danno Ferrin, James Williams and Andres Almiray.  It was a great community effort and a great opportunity to show folks how powerful, easy to use and just plain fun Groovy is.

Grails: A Quick-Start Guide Beta

I am thrilled to announce that the Pragmatic Programmer's first Grails book is now in beta! You can find more details here: http://pragprog.com/titles/dkgrails/grails

Grails: A Quick-Start Guide (also known as GQuick) is aimed at helping developers learn Grails in a hurry. I got the idea for this book through my experience working with a team of Java web developers who were new to Grails. This book would have been a great help to us then and I'm hoping it will be a help to others in similar situations. I am also looking at this book as a contribution to humanity: helping all those poor souls who are struggling day in and day out with JSP, Struts, or (as I was) with JSF & EJB. So, if you know someone like that, go to the Prags website, download a copy and change a life!

The beta means that you can purchase an eBook which contains the first 2/3 of the book and get regular updates as it gets completed. You can also post errors and suggestions to help make the book better. When it's all finished you get the complete edited eBook. There is also an option to pre-purchase the paper book which should ship later this year (I'm hoping for September or October).

One last word about the Pragmatic Programmer's ebooks in general. They are awesome! You don't just get a PDF. Your Prag ebook is available in PDF, epub (for iPhone) or mobi (for the Kindle). You don't have to choose just one either, you can download a copy in any or all the formats. I have several Pragmatic Programmer's titles on my iPhone and they look great.

We need a US Groovy/Grails/Griffon Conference

It's been over a year since the best conference I've ever attended. The Groovy/Grails Experience was held in February 2008 near Washington DC. It was an awesome experience. For the nostalgic and those with too much time on their hands you can read my review of it here.

But we are way overdue for another. The folks that put that conference together, Jay Zimmerman and Scott Davis, both heroes of mine, tried to organize another but when the economy took a turn for the worse they decided to hold off. I understand their concerns. One only has to look at the desperate attempts at drawing attendees the JavaOne organizers are going through to realize that this is a tough climate for conferences. But hey we're talking about Groovy, Grails and Griffon here.

These are technologies that transcend tumultuous times.
While other conferences are being scaled back or cancelled, The GR8 conference, dedicated to G3 technologies, has had to move to a larger venue! And from what I've heard, the turnouts at the growing number of Groovy and Grails training classes haven't been too shabby. The G3 user group community continues to grow. The Grails podcast audience is climbing. We even have a G3 dedicated magazine. We are ready for a G3 Experience.

So, what are we going to do about it? We could get together and put one on ourselves but I still have faith in Jay and Scott. Anyone who has been to a NoFluffJustStuff or related conference knows that nobody does it better. So, let's let them know that it's time. Here's a few steps you can take:

• Go to the 2GX website: http://groovygrails.com/gg/2gexperience and use the form there to register your interest.


• Go to the NoFluffJustStuff feedback form and tell them it's time. You can even plead for your favorite city.


• Send Jay and/or Scott an email (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to track down their email addresses)


• Repeat this urgent plea on mailing lists, news groups, forums, at user groups, at work, in letters to the editor, etc.


• Finally, if you are attending an upcoming NFJS event (coming to Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Columbus) tell Jay or Scott that it's time for another G3 Experience.

Let's get to work, we can make it happen. After all, we are the G3 community. It's not like we're a bunch of (insert your favorite inferior language or technology here) hackers!

I'll see you at the next G3 Experience!

Linux Journal Readers Choice Awards

Well the votes are in and Groovy didn't get enough votes to get mentioned in the Linux Journal's Readers Choice awards.  The winner for favorite programming language was Python and favorite scripting language was bash (go figure :)  But I know that many Groovy users registered their votes in the "other" category so I wouldn't be surprised if next year we're at least on the list.  In fact as evidence that a write in one year can do well the following year, I am thrilled to announce that Contegix won the Readers Choice Award for Favorite Linux Friendly Web Hosting Company!  A quote from the article: "Talk about a meteoric rise, Contegix went from one write-in vote in 2008 to champion of the Favorite Linux-Friendly Web Hosting Company category in 2009."   

Since I have only been working for Contegix since last October, I don't feel like I can take any credit for this big win, but I am still thrilled because I can see how much they deserved it.  I have never worked with a more dedicated and sharp team of technologists.  It is an honor to be among them and I hope I can do my part to help win this award again next year.

But back to Groovy, the key point here is that last year Contegix was just a write in!  This year Groovy was just a write in...  Just wait till next year!   In the meantime, thank you to all you who voted for Groovy and for Contegix!

Suggestions for Grails Refcard?

You may recall a recent poll on DZone where they were looking for input on what to cover next in their Refcardz project. Grails ended up at the top of that poll, by a very healthy margin (roughly 50% more votes than the #2 choice: Maven). The folks at DZone actually listen to their customers (unlike some other companies we know) and are now working on a Grails Refcard!

I have several of these cards and they are a great resource. I am very excited to see that their will soon be one on Grails! (Hopefully this May.) I'm also pretty excited that I get to write it. But these are a community resource so I am hoping to get some community involvement.

So, what would you most like to see in a Grails Refcard? What kind of things would you turn to a cheat sheet for when you're working on a Grails application? Are there features or syntax that you find yourself Googling for often? Now's your chance to get those covered on this handy reference card.

Post your wish list in a comment here or on the Grails mailing list.

Thanks for your help!
Dave