Twin Cities Code Camp

Do you often find yourself writing yet another Java web app while secretly, or not so secretly, envying your co-workers who are playing with Ruby or Clojure with features like closures that make it so much easier to express yourself? If the answer is yes, perhaps you should be taking a look at Groovy. It sort of looks like Java, acts like Java, and under the covers really is Java (i.e. it compiles to byte code) so one could say it acts like a duck, talks like a duck, and therefore must be a duck. So, what exactly is that duck? It is a language that - supports closures for functional programming - can be either dynamically or statically typed (depending on the preferences of the programmer or the context of the code) - has built in mocking, which achieves great power through closures, while at the same time - looks like and plays well with Java - interoperates with Spring - is understood by IntelliJ Interested, come and chat about real life experiences of Groovy into Java code bases.