Groovy 1.8 has finally been released, and let me comment on that with YAY! There are some really great enhancements to an already great language. I’m only going to point out a few of the areas that I am particularly interested in, but you can see the release notes here.

Of particular interest to me:

• Command chains for nicer Domain-Specific Languages
  
  • This one is cool because it takes the already powerful DSL abilities of Groovy and allows an even more natural language syntax. For example: paint wall with red, green and yellow, or convert result to xml
• GPars bundled within the Groovy distribution
  
  • I’m already working in a project that uses the excellent GPars library, and having it bundled is simply a nice to have.
• Native JSON support
  
  • This is great, as I find myself using JSON more frequently than XML these days. Now I don’t have to add additional 3rd party libraries.
• New AST Transformations
  
  • @Log annotation - YES! Now with just a simple annotation I can have my log4j logger ready and available. Sweet.
  • @ThreadInterrupt - This is particularly handy. Now instead of having to put the logic checks in thread methods and loops for an interruption, this will do it for you!
  • @ConditionalInterrupt - Similar to above, except this will actually interrupt the thread for you when a specified condition is met. This has some possiblity.

Overall those are the items I’m most excited about. If you haven’t had a chance to try Groovy, do it now!