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

Thoughts on Groovy, Grails, Griffon and JavaOne

You may have already heard that Groovy, Grails and Griffon are going to be under-represented at this year's JavaOne. While this is a bummer and hard to understand in the face of the enthusiasm that continues to grow in the community (see below for some examples), I don't think the right reaction is to say "who needs them" and skip JavaOne altogether. One idea Graeme Rocher mentioned on Twitter is a good one: a G3 mini conference would be great! The Monday night before JavaOne kicks off would be a perfect time for that.

Anyhow, it's important to note that last year there weren't all that many Groovy related talks either, but what I observed was that Groovy was represented as much by excited attendees as by presenters. I think it can be the same this year. Some of the brightest minds in the G3 community will be at JavaOne and they will have many opportunities outside of the session rooms, to talk about and demonstrate the power, efficiency and fun of Groovy, Grails and Griffon. The rest of us can do the same. So if you can make it to JavaOne go for it and feel the Groovy in the air!

Speaking of enthusiasm in the community, here are a few examples:

Here's a screenshot of the DZone popular link tab for 3/01/2008

This is one of my favorites, from a Sun blog.

This one is from the Stephen Colbourne's blog and shows the results of a whiteboard poll at Devoxx, a European conference that is very similar to JavaOne.

So don't be discouraged- the better mousetrap is doing all right!

Must See Lizard Brain Web Design

It's the morning of the last day of the first NFJS of 2009 and as I wait for things to get hopping, I had to mention that if you get a chance at a NoFluff event or elsewhere, you've got to see Scott Davis' talk titled Lizard Brain Web Design. If you are involved in web development this session will give you some great insight and ideas as to how to make your users happy that they went to your site. If you're not involved in web development, go see it anyway cause it's just plain fun!

Scott also gave a new talk called Dim Sum Grails. This was about as thorough a trip through Grails land as you could possibly fit into 90 minutes.

Brian Goetz, who I've heard has to bring an extra suitcase to carry his brains, gave a very helpful talk on Java Concurrency. He gave so many tips that it would be difficult to not pickup a few nuggets you can use right away. While Brian is not quite as dynamic a speaker as Scott, he is a good teacher and is able to get complex ideas across to the audience.

The day was capped off with the BOFs. I went to the JVM languages BOF and it was interesting but not quite as lively as they had been in the past. The discussion turned more towards functional languages and they just don't seem to get people quite as excited as dynamic languages. That or maybe we were all just to brain-full to get excited about anything.

Anyhow, it's been great so far and there's one more day to go. Today we'll hear more from Brian Goetz and Neal Ford, and Venkat Subramaniam, along with Stu Halloway. Good stuff in Milwaukee - stay up to date with the NoFluff news on Twitter. Search for #nfjs

First NoFluffJustStuff of the year

It's finally here. The first NFJS of 2009! I'm sitting in Scott Davis' "Dim Sum Grails" session right now. Yesterday Scott had three brand new Groovy talks. They were very good. He's moving beyond the "what is Groovy" and into some really cool stuff. All, of course, in his award winning style!

There are also new sessions from Neal Ford, David Geary, Ken Sipe, Venkat Subramaniam, Mark Richards, Stuart Halloway and Brain Goetz. Since I haven't mastered the art of being in two places at once I will pretty much be in the Scott Davis track and then the Brian Goetz track.

I'll try to post more later. For now back to the dim sum!