Well I decided to learn Groovy.
It seems to have the most interesting properties, something like python or perl for java, except without the things I dislike from perl and python (about the former, it's not readible, about the latter I dislike the formatting constraint).
I haven't tested the compilation issue or the speed but this should not be a big problem. We'll see.
I made myself a summary from the groovy syntax and features from the tutorial.
I really like: (see: the differences from Java )
- closures
- the simple list and map syntax... What a pain it is in Java.
- groovy markup as a nice way to work with XML, HTML, ANT...
- easy use of regular expressions !!!!!! YEAH!
- less problems with quotation marks and multi line strings
- Gstring ( something to use variables for strings )
- lots of supplementary useful methods (see the groovy jdk )
- easy iteration ( though 1.5 did make things a lot easier)
- easy setter/getter mechanism for beans
- using closure for listeners
I'll have to try GRAILS, because I tried Rails And I found it not bad really.
It would also be interesting to see whether Groovy can be combined with JSF which I really liked.
But I think I am just starting feeling groovy.