GRAILS INTRODUCTION

Many modern web frameworks in the Java space are more complicated than needed and don’t embrace the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principles.

There's a general trend of "web application frameworks" to be more non-Java based. What I mean is that Spring-Boot and simply Java itself has matured to solve quite a bit of the original problems that Grails was trying to do with "reduce the complexity of building web applications on Java". What happened is that folks pivoted to "web applications on XYZ" and Java and thus Grails has remained more relegated to the backend portion of the web architecture stack. A HUGE portion of the web itself also pivoted to using more Jamstack architectures (Javascript, APIs, Markup - example Next.js, etc. etc. etc.)

It's so prevalent now that you don't really even hear "Jamstack" as an architecture choice... it's status quo for tons of apps & sites for a lot of powering the web. For 90% of the web now, saying "web application" under the covers means "Jamstack". However, there is still a very small part of the web that doesn't work with "Jamstack" mode (there still aren't enough APIs that do all the things some sites need, as an example). Thus what is left of the web after Jamstack driven apps & sites are the data heavy sites that need to work with large databases, and they've already built up and have no need to switch to Grails.

Just throw this into any GPT prompt like Bing CoPilot or Claude or your favorite this week:

What is the difference between jamstack architecture for web applications and other architecture choices?

It's funny because the tide seem to already have turned back again, with one-person-framework, monoliths and server-side rendering.

sorta true. Indeed @matrei

Well, our industry has multiple fads that come and go and history does seem to rhyme. I'm not sold on going back to server-side rendering for the type of development I do, but it might be the right tool for the job for some. I see monoliths as a good place to start a project, but over time, as a project grows I think it's good to break the monolith into services/microservices to keep the project maintainable.

@Groovy Duke It's always good to have all the options on the table. I agree that going all the way back to "old-school" server-side full page rendering isn't to my liking either. Now the hottest thing seems to be Htmx which renders HTML fragments on the server. Supported in Grails by https://github.com/grace-plugins/grace-htmx My personal favorite is Inertia with a Vue.js frontend which gives me the best of both worlds without any hassle. Supported in Grails by https://github.com/matrei/grails-inertia-plugin (shameless plug 😉) What's yours?

Personally, I try to stay out of the front-end as much as possible, and with the Jobs I've had over the years making web applications, a SPA using one front-end framework or another has been the way to go. I tend to keep myself at the level of knowing how to navigate and debug the front-end, but I double down on my strengths of backend development and integrations. So my favorite was probably Angular 1, just because it seemed easier to understand than some of the frameworks that followed it. I haven't worked Vue yet, but I think that might be a possibility for the future with the current project I'm working on, which is shifting from a Monolithic Go app to Micronaut services.

Nice discussion: never heard of the Jamstack, Inertia, etc. Good, to sometimes ask dumb questions…

I'm a guilty party for not keeping plugins updated, life overtook publishing updates to grails-shiro plugin, and I had no actual requests to do so... Svelte is a nice front end and svelte kit is a nice way to make smaller node based apps - Micronaut is very good. I still use and love Grails.

We need experts to take part of the discussions going on here: https://github.com/grails/grails-core/discussions

Actually I find the grails page a bit sad. There guides, yes, but if I just want to get a taste of Grails, then there is just too much... and most looks old. If I google for a tutorial, then the first one is from 2017. If I wanted to provoke I would ask: What does Grails give me Spring Boot does not?

@blackdrag “Them's fighting words” 😁 I don't know how much of the history you know, as you've been in the Groovy community forever, but I'll try to keep this brief and put some back story in a thread. Grails not unlike Groovy has never been that great at marketing itself, it's a type of technology that people use to be productive and get stuff done. What it offers over Spring Boot is what it always offered convention over configuration and DSLs that make developing monolithic web apps quicker and easier than a lot of other frameworks. Since Grails rebased on top of Spring Boot, to simplify development, I thought of Grails as Spring Boot with batteries included. Also, Spring Boot's opinionated setup was definitely influenced by Grails, so without Grails Spring Boot may have not come about when it did. Furthermore, Grails Data services, Spring Data, and Micronaut Data all came from Grails and the same author Graeme Rocher. Now because of various circumstances, Grails has had its funding for development pulled for a second time in its history, this has left the community to try to pull together, to try to pick up the pieces and see if they can forge a path forward, which would include: Getting Grails 7 developed and out Upgrading to Groovy 4 Upgrading to the latest Spring Boot Upgrading so that it can run on JDK 21 Upgrading to newer version of Hibernate Updating documentation and guides Upgrading various plugins Getting Grails on a sustainable release schedule and trajectory. Changes in underlying build structure Possibly removing Micronaut as the parent context This is not an easy task and will take a lot of work to pull off. So far from what I understand some of the updates aren't that bad on the surface, but can cause ripple effects and breaking changes that require more work. I don't know if the Grails community can pull it off or how long it will take, but I'm definitely rooting for them, because if they can't this is a hit not just to the Grails community but to the Groovy community as well.

Obviously, I'm kidding with the "Them's fighting words" as denoted with the grin and referencing:

Let's groove: https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/i-dont-like-writing-web-applications-80bb86841248

The spam continues 😎 https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/my-first-dueuno-elements-application-in-3-steps-tutorial-4210e606c204

CRUD(ity) gives gravity: https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/lets-be-crud-e-for-once-ae0a477c4ec1

dueuno-elements-crud.mov

Thanks god it's Friday 😆 https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/small-but-real-058c684c6d65

Nice to see a new Groovy framework. I am also working on a Groovy framework :)

@Jeremy Schroeder what’s your framework about?

Folks, is there someone here who can tell what we are missing from Micronaut to be the only root for Grails? What is that Spring has that the latest version of Micronaut doesn't? Can someone call @graeme to answer this question?

Do you like green? https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/you-look-good-today-5c0438fbe2ff

We all like home made videos 😎 https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/dueuno-elements-6-one-code-many-devices-52cdc81fdbaf

I've never spammed that much in my life 🙂 https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/dueuno-elements-7-one-to-many-relationships-and-where-to-find-them-70d77cad0fdf

@utenma has left the channel

Q&A https://medium.com/@gianlucasartori/dueuno-elements-q-a-responding-to-your-questions-36d66aef9eb4

@Michał 'Chlebik' Piotrowski has left the channel

“The removal of Micronaut enabled simplification of the Grails codebase and the return of Live Reload via https://github.com/HotswapProjects/HotswapAgent” 🙌 🙌 🙌 🙌 Grails 7 on its way, super hyped for this: https://docs.grails.org/7.0.0-M1/guide/single.html#whatsNew