- triple-quote strings / blocks
- minimal class boilerplate (this posting)
- closures (Java closures are worse IMO)
- usable hashbang for UNIX
- I think java has strings in switch now, don't they? Do they have expressions?
WAIT, does Java STILL force you to write getter/setters?
switch on strings is there, as are switch expressions.
records now removes the need for getters in immutable contexts.
Java has the nullsafe operator now and the elvis too, doesn't it?
I don't use the spaceship operator much, implicit sorting works pretty well.
Groovy's closures have a lot less GOTCHAs. They simply work as expected, at least to me. Half the time I use java closures and I get complaints in compilation that I don't get in Groovy, but maybe they've improved closures more.
Groovy's GPars library is the bomb for concurrency/parallelism. I don't know if I could function in normal java constructs.
The .with keyword is a sneaky useful technique where you can declare a piece of data like:
"some cli command" .with { it.execute} .with { /* parse output */ }
It allows chained calls that flow naturally. Groovy generally allows pretty compact flowed calls which makes scripts a lot easier.
Groovy scripting with implicit vars is a lot easier than any java scripting, even with the "simplification" described.
The shorthand access/navigation of nested lists and maps, and the map / list literals (also taken by java at some point I think) are really nice to have. Also a + operator for lists and maps I use a lot
Groovy's ability to generically call methods without mucking through 10 lines of reflection is sometimes nice.
The auto-gen of getter/setters is a must have, I think Kotlin has those too?
CompileStatic lets me selectively use full java speed without groovy overhead.
In general, I like Groovy because it is typing-optional. Python and Javascript suck because they don't really have optional type enforcement. Java sometimes asks for too much typing. Groovy lets me select as needed.
The actual sane = for string assignment and == for sane string comparison is nice.
But honestly, Java with the listed features is a lot better. I'll probably still use groovy for doing what would normally done with bash (UGH) since I have a big CLI/scripting library base that handles argument parsing, json, encode/decode, encrypt/decrypt, zip/unzip, in nice compact syntax.
Groovy is basically a dead language now anyway. The world is overrun by JavaScript and Python, and AI looms to replace us all with horrid AI python or javascript glue code.
