The groovy sinking ship
Anyone subscribed to the groovy mailing list must either feel exceptionally gleeful, or horribly depressing. I won’t rub too much salt in the wounds of the latter group by cackling about being in the former group. Oh wait, I will, because they’re a bunch of spastic hobbyist fuckwits would should all be fired.
It is with particular glee that I note that no serious work is now being done on groovy. Even the morons who decided to commit to it are starting to complain. Bugs are piling up, the developers have mostly moved onto the next shiny bauble, and there are calls for fresh blood and a ‘new’ set of developers to get things going; a fairly compelling symptom of a project in its death throes.
Particularly hilarious is how all the turdburglars involved feel that getting together for some drinks constitutes a move forward. It’s really quite amazing that any of these people have actual jobs. Is that how you do things at work? Go out for a drink and your projects just magically finish themselves? Perhaps you blog about it a bit and tell everyone how great it is, and then documents magically write themselves? Or perhaps you’re one of these new breed of fuckstains, who think that the code is the documentation and brag of that, instead of the traditional shame usually associated with making such a comment. On the other hand, groovy could be breaking (more) new ground by being the first JSR where the final spec format is…mp3 (for those of you not reading the lists for their comical value, the ‘outcome’ of the groovy JSR gettogether is nothing but a bunch of mp3′s).
Still, at least it’s good to see that after all these months, the end of line semicolon saga is still dragging on, as are all of the syntactic sugar issues that people raised all those months ago. Democracy at its finest.
It almost seems spiteful in fact, how the groovy fearless leader seems to go out of his way to never post anything to the mailing lists.
It’s also delightfully satisfying to see that the early adopters are being punished, as they should be, by guarantees that the syntax will change in non-backward compatible ways. You fuckers need to be clubbed on the head like that so one day, one day, you might actually learn.
As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a regular posting of the build breaking or someone unable to get it going, thanks to the wonderful magic of maven. It’s truly astounding what sort of shit people will put up with in order to uphold their religious convictions.
The one person who has to be pitied though is poor Guillaume Laforge, who is the only remaining groovy developer. He tirelessly responds to emails on the mailing lists even though he probably knows deep down inside that it’s a lost cause. It’s sad and depressing, but I suppose some people just don’t know when to give up. if I were his employer though I suspect I’d gradually start getting more and more annoyed at my employee pouring so much time and effort into such a dirty toilet.
I have to give credit to Sun as well, for managing to milk so much good PR out of pretending to listen to these monkeys. First they accept the JSR, knowing how unlikely that a bunch of open source ADD kids can manage to stay focussed for a few minutes, let alone the months a JSR requires. It costs them nothing, and all the usual suspects will be dazzled and impressed.
Even funnier is Tim Bray’s PR stunt to get that group of misfits together. They came, they saw, they chatted and looked serious, and in the end, of course, very little will actually happen. This is all a great thing, people doing real work won’t have to worry about the children smearing feces all over themselves, and the children get to smear feces like they’ve never smeared before.
Will groovy ever get past the alpha stage? Sure, it’s quit plausible. It’s quite a race between them and the JDOM JSR. What is clear though is that if it ever makes it to a final JSR, you can be sure that the current developers sole contribution to it would be as a footnote in the credits section. In the meantime, I’m going to sit back and gloat and scream out I told you so to anyone who’d care to listen.
December 10th, 2004 at 9:43 pm
If no work is being done on Groovy, then how come people are committing code every day?
http://builds.codehaus.org/damagecontrol/public/project/groovy-core
Nitwit
December 10th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
Groovy really is not needed. BeanShell and PNuts are both very good projects in the same line.
December 10th, 2004 at 10:35 pm
Not to mention Mozilla Rhino (javascript), JRuby, and Jython. Why bother helping those projects when you can brag about how you started a JSR on your resume?
They proudly declare on their homepage that Groovy combines, “lots of great features from languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk…”. Why not be useful and fully implement one of those languages on the JVM? Then you could run pre-existing code instead of writing all new code in a new half-assed language.
December 10th, 2004 at 11:02 pm
Oh my, look what was commited today. There is a TON of stuff going on in groovy. :)
/**
* Appends a String
*
* @param left a StringBuffer
* @param value a String
* @return a String
*/
public static String plus(StringBuffer left, String value) {
return left + value;
}
December 10th, 2004 at 11:43 pm
“Appends a String”? In English, we use periods at the ends of sentence fragments. It’s amazing how anathemic that simple dot is to developers. And note how the javadoc doesn’t even begin to describe what the method does or why. Why did the developer bother adding javadoc at all? And what kind of sense does the parameter named “left” make? I assume that would refer to the “left-hand side”, but if so the method implementation is erroneous. Perhaps it’s referring to a right-hand side term that’s to the left of “value”. If so, this method is not OO. I think I see why Groovy has so many bugs.
December 11th, 2004 at 12:02 am
If you need javadoc to figure out what this method does, you have no business in the source code. Do you really need to javadoc a one liner?
December 11th, 2004 at 1:50 am
Yo y’all be dissin’ mah Groovy homie niggaz but mah niggaz be packin’ gats and shit and we be blastin’ y’all bitch niggaz for runnin’ yo mouth so yah betta shut da fuck up biatch befo’ a bustacapinyoass biatch. Yo dis dat Epesh nigga rockin’ da hood with mah 12″ sub and 24″ rimz and shit ya know what I’m sayin’.
December 11th, 2004 at 7:41 am
Maybe they left off the period for “syntactic sugar.” *shrugs*
December 11th, 2004 at 8:49 am
Ha ha … i was waiting for this! Great post hani ,… great post … groovy never deserved to be … its bulshit and now all the mindless morons will suffer .. bwa ha ha. poor strachmaclahan that fat idiot fuck, …. there goes another tom, dick and james and his dog little framework … bwa ha ha
December 11th, 2004 at 9:00 am
Who wrote this ?
those who can do do.
those who can’t do teach,
those who can’t teach criticize.
December 11th, 2004 at 10:46 am
Erm, there’s tons of work going on in Groovy right now – did you try looking at the CVS log?
The semicolon issue is resolved and there are no optional ambiguities in the parser any more, we fixed that all at the last Groovy Conference.
We’ve a brand new parser and EBNF with all the new syntax changes implemented which is gonna be in CVS in the next day or two.
The beta-8 release is going out next week with about 48 bug fixes, then the new parser’s going in & we should be pretty close to the final 1.0 syntax. For those worried about backwards compatibility due to a couple of syntax changes, we’ll have an interim backwards compatible version – but the 1.0 final release will break a few things.
Things are rockin’ on Groovy; its just maybe not totally obvious from following the mailing lists.
December 11th, 2004 at 12:55 pm
Blot – Yeah, not typing a period after a one-liner javadoc is really bad! What a wannabe post after the last blog about Developers vs English. If you’re gonna try and be a Hani’s sidekick, atleast make some useful and relevant criticism.
December 11th, 2004 at 2:36 pm
James, I admit to some confusion. I last checked around on Thursday and there was no hint that the new parser was done, complete with EBNF. Hell, no one could even definitely define the basics. Suddenly two days later all ambiguities are fixed and you have an EBNF grammar? Two days ago there wasn’t even a consensus on which parser generator to use. Now it’s done and will be checked into CVS by Monday? WTF?
What of the expert committee, James? Was all this whirlwind of work done by the committee, or are two or three people doing all the work and promising to get back to the larger committee eventually with a fait accompli?
December 12th, 2004 at 2:54 am
Mike
BTW what do you mean by ‘no one could definitely define the basics’? Wanna ask me a direct question about something & I should be able to answer (preferably on the jsr list).
So far 2 guys have volunteered to write a new parser which generates EBNF, which have been up to now 2 parallel spikes; they’re now working together and the first cut of it should hit CVS very soon. This is the same parser we’ve been talking about on the JSR list for some time.
The ambiguities were discussed at length at the last Groovy Conference, which was open to all JSR members wishing to attend. As a result of the conference, we’ve gone ahead and removed the ambiguities & as soon as the EBNF is done, we’ll have something concrete to discuss on the JSR – otherwise its pretty hard to brain dump 2 days worth of discussions onto a bunch of emails.
Its certainly not a fait accompli, more, its the most efficient way we could think of to communicate the results of 2 days worth of discussions so that the rest of the JSR EG who were not there can get up to speed on where we got to and make constructive comments.
December 12th, 2004 at 6:13 am
“as soon as the EBNF is done”. Eh? I thought you said (two posts above) that it WAS done.
December 12th, 2004 at 5:51 pm
You don’t understand. We NEED this man, we need it! I know Python, Perl, Ruby, Rex et al didn’t catch on amongst most Java programmers, but Groovy will, because it…err…nope, out of ideas.
December 12th, 2004 at 5:58 pm
James, I think everyone interested in seeing how Groovy is developing would like to see an honest and open exchange of information, and to see an organized display of information as to the JSR’s progress.
As it is, looking around at various JSR informational sources, entirely too many questions are “answered” with one of two responses: “It’s somewhere in James’ head” or “I think it was mentioned somewhere at the meeting – go listen to the 10 hours of MP3′s to find it”.
Look at Chris Poirier’s plea for information on the JSR mailing list for an eloquent comment on this. A JSR expert group member is saying he’s being shut out of the information flow. If this is how an expert group member feels, try to imagine how people outside of that circle feel, and more importantly what perceptions they’re going to garner.
There’s also honest communications, and then there’s just plain spin. For example, you’re saying this:
“The semicolon issue is resolved and there are no optional ambiguities in the parser any more, we fixed that all at the last Groovy Conference.
We’ve a brand new parser and EBNF with all the new syntax changes implemented which is gonna be in CVS in the next day or two.”
The feeling you’re giving is that it’s all over except the shouting. You’re saying all the ambiguities have been solved, and a new parser will drop into CVS along with an EBNF grammar presumably by Monday. Sounds like users can download CVS head and start playing with this revamped and rock-solid, non-ambiguous Groovy, now doesn’t it?
In fact, you’re setting up Groovy watchers for a monumental disappointment, with a subsequent additional drop in Groovy interest. As the IRC log indicates, what people will be able to look at is the “first pre-pre-pre-alpha WIP [work in progress] of a groovy antlr grammar”. From what I’ve seen, it won’t even hook into the runtime, or if it will it will do so in only a rather minimalist fashion.
This is of course all fine – no person watching the progress and fragments of information would expect everything to be done, and it sounds like John Rose and Jeremy Rayner are doing solid work. But…A) it’s kind of disappointing that two guys are going to produce a grammar that most JSR expert group members haven’t even seen, based on rules that aren’t written down anywhere. And B) you keep saying “everything’s solved!!!!” when in fact that’s far from the case. It’s reassuring to see a professional like Rose stating the clear facts, clearly showing “pre-pre-pre-Alpha WIP” and saying it will take many months to get the spec put together – that’s honest and obviously based on experience. But that credibility is shattered when you go about saying all ambiguities are solved, the parser’s done, let’s all go out drinking!”. Groovy has already lost a staggering number of people who looked into Groovy because of its potential, and then walked away shaking their head because the PR didn’t match the implementation. Statements like you’re making here is just going to set up a situation where even more people are going to get all excited by what you’re saying, and then walk away shaking their heads when they see how little actual progress has been made compared to what you’re saying in your statements.
You shouldn’t wonder why so many people are predicting Groovy’s demise. At this point you should wonder why there’s anyone left.
December 12th, 2004 at 8:47 pm
Please explain to me why I’d want to use “Groovy” instead of, oh, I don’t know, Perl, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, whatever?
December 12th, 2004 at 11:47 pm
You wouldn’t want to use Groovy because of all of the valid points posted by Hani and Mike Spille.
December 13th, 2004 at 4:41 am
Mike, I’m not sure why I’m giving the feeling “its all over bar the shouting’. Let me be really, really clear then.
* we’ve a new experimental parser which is defined in Antlr, rather than the wierd, hand crafted one we had before.
* the Antlr parser can generate EBNF so that folks can see a clear, consise grammar
* the EBNF is the easiest way yet we’ve found to communicate the grammar fixes that we came up with at the 2 day groovy conference which was open to all JSR members
* here’s the first draft of the auto-generated EBNF…
http://grash.javanicus.com/GroovyRecognizer.html
* its gonna take a while to integrate the new parser
* the beta-8 release is going out this week, without the new parser
* there’s still plenty of things on the groovy language up for grabs
* all we’ve done so far is try and fix the multitude of optionalities that was making writing an EBNF for the language impossible.
* if anyone has any questions on the current language or status of the JSR, please ask on the JSR mail list.
* I’ve never said Groovy is done, or near done – its gonna take a while to get to 1.0.
I hope that helps clear up any confusion
December 13th, 2004 at 8:27 am
This Strachan guy must be on some weird stuff. In one comment everything is practically released, a couple of comments later it’s nowhere near done. A finer example of spin followed by furious backpedalling has never been seen. The trouble is Strachan guy, intelligent people read this blog (not dumbasses like those that read the Groovy mailing list). Don’t try BS here, you won’t get away with it. You’ll just have to prise yourself into those cycling shorts and go backwards very quickly.
Fwee Wod-e-wick!
Biggus
December 13th, 2004 at 8:54 am
Whine whinge moan gripe insult.
December 13th, 2004 at 9:33 am
The ANTLR parser *generates* EBNF? And I thought EBNF was human-generated input to the ANTLR parser-generator…Bah Humbug?
December 13th, 2004 at 10:02 am
James said:
As a result of the conference, we’ve gone ahead and removed the ambiguities & as soon as the EBNF is done, we’ll have something concrete to discuss on the JSR – otherwise its pretty hard to brain dump 2 days worth of discussions onto a bunch of emails.
==========
WTF?
Projects and JCPs in general put to paper weeks and months worth of discussion and planning!
2 days “worth of discussions” is NOTHING!
If you cannot even comminucate *that* in a bunch of emails, then how the f**k the JCP is going to go forward? (rhetorical question)
December 13th, 2004 at 10:46 am
James is a bright, creative guy. Bright and creative guys often make messes while they are being bright and creative .. you can’t expect the inventive process to be a sterile laboratory. If Groovy is a good idea, hopefully the early-stage mess will clear up with time. If so, Groovy may succeed; if not, then the industry will move on. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
December 13th, 2004 at 12:01 pm
It’s funny to find out that there is even a conference for something as lame as Groovy. Usually you expect conferences for something of value where there is a large momentum behind it.
December 13th, 2004 at 12:49 pm
It wasn’t a conference. They all went out drinking then claimed it was some “conference.”
Bullshit.
And look at what one clever Perl hacker managed to do all on his own in a few months: http://www.template-toolkit.org/
You guys are total frauds.
December 13th, 2004 at 2:17 pm
I’m afraid Scammed, there was a conference hosted at Sun’s offices which lasted for 2 full days from 9am to 6pm each day with a break for lunch. Didn’t you see the pictures posted on some blogs?
The drinking only started after 6pm – but the drinking is always the best part of conferences :)
December 13th, 2004 at 3:01 pm
I love writting software and I am glad I found something so enjoyable to do during my short life on this small planet. I really like the ideas behind Groovy, and I admire the spunk to VOLUNTEER to make something like it. If I didn’t, I’d go somewhere else and talk about something else.
Hani, who must have suffered some unspeakable event(s) in his childhood, insists on publishing such hateful, nasty, brain-numbing synicism. I have no time for this. I have work to do. Hani should seek counseling and do the world a favor.
I love programming. Is this conversation worth our time? I’ll see some of you in some other blog. ba bye.
December 13th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Groovy.
December 14th, 2004 at 4:35 am
As I overheard in my cafe only a few days ago …
“It’s all a load of bollocks, and bollocks to it all”
December 14th, 2004 at 4:39 am
Oh how I loved sitting and listening to the jizz-dribblers telling us about their whole new language they had invented; they were the beautiful people.
Shame that it was just a load of old shat like all the other things those tits throw together. Try working in the real world NitWits
December 14th, 2004 at 7:30 am
Thanks Hani!
Every time a smile is near, every time joy and life is sneaking up upon me, every time I start feeling happy, then, every time, I go to your place! Truly yours!
December 14th, 2004 at 9:04 am
Hey Hani,
I just noticed that the link to “contact us for licensing info” on Epix is to a page called 69.html
Does that mean that you are prepared to get down with a customer and munch on each other’s private parts in order to get a deal??
BD.
December 14th, 2004 at 12:59 pm
It’s true. Any dork using Groovy over BeanShell ought to be run out of town.
December 15th, 2004 at 2:22 pm
Hey! Stop everyone right there!
Jakarta Commons Transaction was released! I preview a nice bile coming on this Friday :)
December 15th, 2004 at 2:28 pm
I’m a bit new to all this open source,
Why is Sun open-sourcing Solaris (but not it’s Crown Jewels Java), IBM AIX etc etc if open source is such a bad idea. i.e people lose interest eventually and go and play with new toys.?
December 15th, 2004 at 2:55 pm
I’m a bit new to all this open source,
Why is Sun open-sourcing Solaris (but not it’s Crown Jewels Java), IBM AIX etc etc if open source is such a bad idea. i.e people lose interest eventually and go and play with new toys.?
December 15th, 2004 at 7:26 pm
Java *is* open-source. I’m looking at the source right now.
December 15th, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Yes, but Java is not freedom source. ;-)
December 15th, 2004 at 11:28 pm
James Strachan,
Don’t take this blog seriously. Do your thing. Keep up the good work.
Criticism just means you got their attention.
First they said that there was no work being done. When you explained there was, did they apologize. Nope. They just found out something else to criticize.
Don’t sweat it man.
December 16th, 2004 at 4:17 am
Helen: where did you read that IBM was opensourcing AIX? I tought that IBM was going to slowly phase out AIX to use Linux instead (and in fact IBM ported some of its technologies like the Filesystem or the support for NUMA machines to it)…
Anyway, opensourcing your own software has different meanings in different cases:
- if you are a home developer, a student or a
hobbyst, you opensource your software because
you do a balance and you don’t think it’s worth
to keep it closed… having it opensource may as
well mean that someone that needs to use it on
another machine will be able to port to that
machine… or you also get a lot of other
side-benefits…
- if you are a company, you don’t opensource stuff
that you SELL… you opensource a framework,
parasite on the “induced” industry that the
framework will put forward (including also cheap
labour and cheap training), and you (in some
case delude yourself to) SELL instead
other things, like consulting, training or
custom solutions.
December 16th, 2004 at 5:00 am
I started looking at Groovy months ago and got all excited, but I’ve been increasingly feeling like a Bozo coz I just didn’t get it. Then I learned Ruby and built some KO0L!!11!! RO0BY W4R3Z and that’s when I realized that I just didn’t give a flying fuck about Groovy any more. Hurrah!
December 16th, 2004 at 11:48 am
You really are a bozo.
December 16th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
First observation: Groovy now owns “google branding” (first link on search) (or google knows I’m a java programmer)
Second observation:
“Current build status
The Groovy project uses DamageControl as a Continuous Integration system to make Groovy build automatically. The little coloured bubble on the left show the status of the last automatic build: if it’s green, the build was successful, if it’s red, the build failed. And if it is pulsating, it means there’s a new build currently in the works.”
What if there is a broken image “Red X”?
Third Observation:
Seems cooler than before. I hope there is no XML involved though. I saw something called “Nice” that claimed to have some of this stuff.
Anyhow, it seems some of this is done in the spirit of “any press is good press”. Bile included. Any mention of poo poo, feces, turds tends to grab attention every time. Great marketing tactic if you ask me.
December 17th, 2004 at 8:57 am
“Hani, who must have suffered some unspeakable event(s) in his childhood, insists on publishing such hateful, nasty, brain-numbing synicism. I have no time for this. I have work to do. Hani should seek counseling and do the world a favor. ”
Yet you had time to read this blog, didn’t you? You had time to read the blog, but missed its whole intent. Way to go – fatty.
December 17th, 2004 at 2:20 pm
Oh my! Hani,look at this, it’s brilliant: you can combine Groovy and Maven!
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-pg12144.html
I’ll have to tell NASA – they might need this technology to control their next spaceship.
December 17th, 2004 at 6:18 pm
Nice (and, more recently, Scala) extend Java along a slightly different axis than groovy does – they’re statically typed, functional-programming-inspired languages, whereas Groovy is more a dynamically typed object-functional language along the lines of Ruby.
December 19th, 2004 at 5:51 am
Yet another over hyped scripting language. I am just tired of the lot. Beanshell works groovy when I need it.
December 20th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
Hani, is there a picture of you somewhere? I can connect James’s face and name. Where you also in Thirsty Bear at Groovy drinks?
P.S
I am not sure I like you any more.
December 21st, 2004 at 12:17 pm
Hani,
you are a myth, Once you post your picture
you become just one of those mortals.
So don’t interupt my dream of you
as a sexy mother fucker.
I don’t want to know how ugly you
really are…
Santa.
December 21st, 2004 at 8:08 pm
Santa, you should know what Hani looks like. Aren’t you the perv that sees people when they’re sleeping? I guess it only works with childeren, in which case you’re a petiphile.
December 22nd, 2004 at 12:11 am
Cool! I was looking for a new way to script my Jelly and Ruby scripted Jython scripts. Does it support the same features that XSLT does?
December 22nd, 2004 at 4:54 am
Ah, XSLT, when can that be biled?
December 22nd, 2004 at 8:29 am
Asalak ‘fathead’ Helleboy is a plain ol idiot, … better move in with your mate strachmachlanan …. 2 fat fucks …
we love ya hani
December 22nd, 2004 at 1:21 pm
Follow the link ..
December 22nd, 2004 at 3:24 pm
Idiot, you should know by know that Santa is not gay nor is he pedophile, he just have to bribe kids so they don?t tell dad that Santa is doing ma?. As for Hani, Santa just got bored with Xmas shopping so he starts reading the Biles.
And here Santa?s biggest wish for this year:
A dirty bile on XSL/T. (X Sized Slut)
December 23rd, 2004 at 7:25 pm
What Santa really wanted is some nudes of Hani.
December 24th, 2004 at 1:28 pm
I tried Groovy many months ago and I was ready to like it: at least a dynamic-typed programming language hidding the complexity of Java. But it turned out that the tutorials were out of date, the examples didn’t work, the syntax is horrible, and it reminded me that Java is absolute crap.
December 27th, 2004 at 11:29 am
The JAVA Community should work on improving Groovy or let others do. One more scripting language is a good thing.
For now, I tend to use BeanShell
February 9th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
To a completely different matter, do you guys know that your navigation-bar-thing appear right on top of the text?!? The last word of every sentence is covered by it?
Maybe its cos I’m viewing this at 800×600 resolution, but still, you should use relative positioning or what ever
February 16th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
The best humor here is that that vitriolic acid spew above, laced with incessant obscenities criticizes the Groovy project with unprofessionalism.
I would bet the bileblogger has never used Groovy.