The Manning book page leads to all the online resources about the book like
the table of contents
free chapters
reader's forum
errata
Please note that the PDF/ebook version of the book is only available via the Manning book page.
The Amazon page
allows for quickly buying the book.
There also is a German edition of the book called "Groovy im Einsatz".
You can find it at Amazon DE and on the Hanser publishing site where you can also get the PDF/ebook version.
Groovy in Action #3 top seller at JavaOne 2008 JavaOne is a really great conference: some many great people, talks, and discussions about innovation and latests Trends. JavaOne also has it's own bookstore, the "digitalGuru". On Wednesday, the second official conference day, they published the top sellers so far and guess what: Groovy in Action has finished #3 !
The only sad side of the story is that digitalGuru didn't order enough copies in advance, so they ran out of GINA copies by Wednesday noon. They take orders, though... It is certainly great that they have sold all their copies but they could have given so many more attendees the chance to buy a book with 20% discount on site. Also, since no more copies can be sold, GINA will certainly drop in the top seller list at the end of the conference.
The really good news is that people show so much interest in Groovy and you hear on the floor that Groovy is now considered the "default choice for dynamic programming on the Java platform".
Now I'm off to prepare the talk that Sun has chosen to present a second time because it has been so successful on Wednesday: "Going mobile with JavaFX, Groovy, and Google Android". The repeating session is scheduled for Friday, 1.30 pm in room E 302.
First of all: Groovy has won the JAX Innovation Award 2007! This european prize honors the most important innovation for the Java platform in the last year, criteria being innovation, creativity, elegance, and practical relevance. Together with the prize comes a donation of EUR 10'000.- to the Groovy project. I must say that the Groovy is not only proud but also very thankful for the recognition of our effort and all the great feedback from our friends like the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA team.
The next big event was JavaOne in San Francisco, where numerous talks and events around Groovy and Grails took place. My co-author Guillaume Laforge and myself delivered a Groovy talk with huge success. The 600-seats room was not big enough to accommodate all interested parties and a long queue before the door was refused to enter. Right after that, a booksigning event was scheduled for 30 minutes that had to be extended to one hour to satisfy all wishes for autographs.
Groovy in Action sold extremely well at the conference, finishing #5 in the overall bestseller list even though it was available only half of the time.
Since JavaOne, more reviews of the book have been published.
Burk Hufnagel reviews Groovy in Action on JavaLobby with the best possible rating in all categories. Some quotes from the review: "If you're a Java developer, or new Groovy developer, who is interested
in becoming proficient in Groovy, this book is for you. And if you're
not interested, you should be." "Groovy in Action is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.
It's comprehensive and written to be read." "Do yourself a favor: buy the book, download Groovy, and have a blast."
Pan Pantziarka reviews Groovy in Action on RegDeveloper with verdict "highly recommended". Quote: "Aside from the intrinsic interest in the subject matter, it has to be
said that this is a book that is very readable, engaging, and does a
great job of slotting Groovy into the broader world of software
development."
Here are some more voices from the blogoshpere:
O'Reilly radar: The noticeable trend with the mid-minor languages is that Groovy came from nowhere and has now sold 1500 copies in the first quarter of 2007.
Dielehy From all accounts the Groovy and Grails books at JavaOne were literally flying off of the shelves, they ran out several times (I personally have been waiting for Groovy In Action since I first heard about it).
Paul To get started, I bought the Groovy in Action book. This is very well written and was easy to work through, and covered so much information I think I’ll be going back through it many times.
Concerning the reception of the Groovy in Action book, the following voices were raised lately in the blogosphere:
Burkhardt Hufnagel It's all I'd hoped for and more. If you're interested in learning Groovy, this is an excellent book. Just make sure you're near a machine with Groovy installed when you read it. You'll want to try out many of the code samples, just for the fun of it.
Gregory Pierce This book should actually be called Groovy: The Definitive Guide as it will work both as an educational text and as a reference book for those developers who adopt Groovy as either a scripting language or as a primary development language for their project. The entirety of the language is covered and sections on frequently debated language features such as closures are detailed enough to allow the reader to understand the material even outside of the context of the language.
Andres Almiray .. it's incredible how easy to grasp Groovy concepts while reading GINA, I find it hard to stop reading it .. GINA is more than an introduction to the language, it is more like a map of the current Groovy environment and its correlation to the Java ecosystem. Even the fact that the book was ultimately integrated and "tested" with Groovy to get to the final version is a testimony on Groovy's power and that the authors really know the topic =) (this may be a trend, at least I know that the Ruby book has done the same approach), congratulations to the authors and everyone involved in this fine piece of work.
kousenit [Groovy in Action] .. has jumped to the top of my favorite technical books list.
What David Blacksays about Groovy in Action (2007/03/15) : "I’m about half way through Groovy in Action and I’m really enjoying it, and despite having used early versions of Groovy for a couple of years now, I’m learning loads of new tricks. This is a well written technical introduction to the language, and as with all great technical books its easy to read and doesn’t get bogged down. [..]"
And here is Victor Charlie(2007/03/15): "From cover to cover I commend the writing style of this book. It teaches theory and teaches it well. GinA shows the most complete, up-to-date usage of Groovy. The price of the book is worth it in just learning how cool XML can be. The Manning Books that are on my shelf are the ones I have kept and the books I NEVER loan out.[..] I just spent 2 weeks trying to embed Groovy into an ongoing java app. Funny, the lines of Groovy code kept getting shorter and shorter. [..]"
From the David Sills Groovy in Action review at JavaLobby (rated the maximum of five smileys in all categories): "A unique aspect of the book permeates the examples: [..] This sort of guarantee of accuracy is worth
its weight in gold. [..] just clean, well-tested
code.
And what examples! The authors have not flinched from tackling some
decidedly non-trivial issues in their pursuit of examples that would
really reveal the features and utility of the language. It is
astonishing to see how wide a range of applications Groovy can tackle
and how successfully it can simplify and clarify code that in Java
could easily become prohibitively complex.
The prose style is engaging and highly readable; the author's voice
is never excessively prominent. This isn't a collection of opinions,
but it does fairly shout excitement about the possibilities it
describes. One feels it a work of proselytization in the best sense, a
work that radiates an infectious enthusiasm about a new and useful
discovery, and that ignites a corresponding enthusiasm in the reader.[..]
This book is therefore squarely in the line of other books in Manning's
distinguished "In Action" series. It will grace my bookshelf for many a
year."
".. I must confess that I read GINA in less than 3 days, even if it has more than 600 pages (oke, I confess I haven't read it all, but for sure more than 80% of it). And not only that I got that feeling that it is so fun that I cannot stop myself, but I think it fulfills all the characteristics of great and absolutely enjoyable PL book."
He closes with: "Finally, without any fear, I would say that Groovy in Action is not just a language guide, but represents the clear, readable and enjoyable specification of Groovy (and you should definitely read it and start playing with Groovy [blink/] )."
Big thanks to Alexandru for this great review and making Groovy annotations-aware such that it can be used with EJB3, Hibernate 3, TestNG, and all other frameworks that rely on annotation support. Dierk König
Groovy in Action 9 stars on slashdot review Groovy in Action was reviewed on slashdot by Simon P. Chappell. He ranks it 9 on a scale from 1 to 10. He calls it the "definitive guide", gives an overview of the contents, andfinally closes with "There is much to like about GinA. Mr. König and his co-authors writing
is clear and engaging and Manning's layout and typography are up to
their usual excellent standards. On it's own, these are good reasons to
consider this book if Groovy interests you, but when you mix in the
fact that Mr. König is a committer on the Groovy project and has taken
an active role in the creation of the language itself, then you have a
very compelling reason to choose it.
Groovy in Action is an excellent book, written by one of the
designers of the Groovy language. If you have any interest in modern
scripting languages at all, I would recommend that you check out this
book. "
"Manning has recently published Groovy In Action, known as GINA. GINA is being referred to as "Groovy's Pick Axe Book" (a reference to Dave Thomas' definitive guide to Ruby, Programming Ruby). That is not because GINA was the first major book published on Groovy. This has more to do with GINA's clear, direct and thorough coverage of the language."
"I got my copy of Groovy in Action a couple of days ago and ever since I’ve been reading and trying to apply everything I’ve learned. [..] I read over the Groovy XML chapter and got really excited. I was like, “Wow! I bet I could write a five or ten liner groovy script to split up this big ol’ XSL doc!” Big ol’ fat chance!"
Weiqi Gao, I Picked It Up, I Can't Put It Down! "All-in-all, I think Groovy in Action is among the top five Manning
books. For me personally, it's also a perception changing and
influential book. [..]
I highly recommend Groovy in Action for Java developers who want to
learn Groovy in a systematic way and who are starting Groovy projects."
