Language Bigotry and Groovy
The article Fear and Loathing in Typeland from the O’Reilly OnJava Blog expresses really well my reason for preferring Groovy to Ruby. One of the problems with starting something new as a reaction to something old is that whatever has gone before is automatically bad. In this case I think that Java does have some advantages, as Robert Cooper points out, and that the Ruby guys just need a little maturity.
The Groovy crowd on the other hand seem to me to have a healthy dose of humility in all they do so that when it makes sense to use Java for something they say so. Admittedly there is still a bit of “We are better than Ruby” which needs to be watched but when it comes to the community I think they are right.
Ruby is certainly more popular but I for one, perhaps irrationally, am not interested in spending my time learning it because of the negative vibe I get from Ruby people.
