My pitch to get my company on board to using Groovy.

1. Groovy Finesse
Why would we use Groovy?

2. General Information
HomePage - http://groovy.codehaus.org
Groovy is open source using a BSD / Apache style licence
Sun's defacto scripting language (JSR-241)
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=241
Dynamic Language that is compiled into Java class
bytecode
The company behind Groovy and Grails (G2One) was just
bought by a respectable company called SpringSource (the
same one that does the support for Spring)
70k downloads in November 2007 and growing

3. Benefits
Easy for Java Developers to understand and adopt
Is the Only JVM language interchangeable with Java code
Compiled Groovy classes can be used from Java
Compiled Java classes can be used from Groovy
Can use Java syntax in Groovy seamlessly
Growing community and interest
The company behind Groovy G2One was just bought by a
respectable company called SpringSource
With the new stable release (1.6) that came out last week it
brings forth performance improvements
GroovyConsole provides a quick way to test out any
arbitrary code

4. Benefits over Java
More concise, cleaner syntax and has less syntax noise
than Java
Can be ran as shell scripts (just like Perl)
Closures
Closures are Objects that encapsulate behavior
Have a scope that allows for clean exiting of external
resources without writing explicit code
Closing files gracefully
Closing JDBC connections gracefully
etc
Currying allows to make more concise closures from
other closures by providing defaults to parameters

5. Benefits over Java
MOP - Meta Object Protocol
Allows to inspect any arbitrary object
Helper methods dump() or inspect() will expose the
underlying attributes and their values
Allows addition or modification of methods at runtime
Allows the creation of DSLs

6. Benefits over Java
Builders (a nice and clean patterns that allows to build
complex objects using nested closures)
MarkupBuilder - for HTML, XML etc
JMXBuilder
SwingBuilder

7. Features not Found in Standard Java
The Groovy language is largely a superset of the Java
language. One can usually rename a .java file to a .groovy one
and it will work (though there are a few gotchas). Groovy has a
number of features not found in standard Java.
This makes the learning curve for Java developers almost zero,
since they can start with Java syntax and gradually learn to add
Groovy features. [1] Groovy features not available in Java
include both static and dynamic typing (with the def keyword),
closures, operator overloading, native syntax for lists and
associative arrays (maps), native support for regular
expressions, polymorphic iteration, expressions embedded
inside strings, additional helper methods, and the safe
navigation operator "?." to automatically check for nulls (for
example, "variable?.method()", or "variable?.field")

8. Groovy Modules
COM Scripting — script Windows ActiveX and COM components with
Groovy
Gant
GFreeMarker — an integration of the FreeMarker template engine for
Groovy
GMaven — GMaven provides integration of the Groovy language into
Maven.
Google Data Support — makes using the Google Data APIs easier from
within Groovy
Gram — a simple xdoclet-like tool for processing doclet tags or Java 5
annotations
GraphicsBuilder — GraphicsBuilder is a Groovy builder for Java 2D
Grapplet
Griffon — Dekstop Enhancements for Groovy
Groosh — Provides a shell-like capability for handling external processes.
Groovy Jabber-RPC — allows you to make XML-RPC calls using the
Jabber protocol

9. Groovy Modules
GroovyJMS
GroovyLab — Provides a domain specific language (DSL) for math
engineering (matlab-like syntax).
Groovy Monkey — is a dynamic scripting tool for the Eclipse Platform
GroovyRestlet — Groovy DSL for constructing Restlet application
Groovy Science
Groovy SOAP — create a SOAP server and make calls to remote SOAP
servers using Groovy
GroovySWT — a wrapper around SWT, the eclipse Standard Widget
Toolkit
GroovyWS — GroovySOAP replacement that uses CXF and Java5
features
GSP — means GroovyServer Pages, which is similar to JSP (JavaServer
Pages)
GSQL — supports easier access to databases using Groovy
HTTP Builder — provides a convenient builder API for complex HTTP
requests
JideBuilder — JideBuilder is a Groovy builder for the open source JIDE

10. Groovy Modules
Native Launcher — a native program for launching groovy scripts
Proxy-o-Matic — Proxy-o-Matic lets you create dynamic proxies fast and in
an homogeneous way
Windows NSIS-Installer — a Windows-specific installer for Groovy
Windows Services — framework for Groovy-based WinNT (Windows)
Services
WingSBuilder — WingsBuilder is a Groovy builder for the wingS
Framework
XMLRPC — allows you to create a local XML-RPC server and/or to make
calls on remote XML-RPC servers
Grails — a Groovy-based web framework inspired by Ruby on Rails
GORM — the Grails Object-Relational Mapping persistence framework
GroovyPlugin — A Groovy plugin for JSPWiki
OCM Groovy — A Object Content Mapping implemented in Groovy
leveraging the Java Content Repository (JCR)
Tellurium — A test framework built on top of the Selenium test framework
implemented in Groovy

11. IDE Support
Debugging with JSwat
Eclipse Plugin
IntelliJ IDEA Plugin
IntelliJ IDEA Plugin (JetBrains Edition)
JEdit Plugin
NetBeans Plugin
Oracle JDeveloper Plugin
Other Plugins
TextMate

12. Project Build Management
Maven
Ant
Gradle

13. Groovy Books
Groovy In Action (Manning)
Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java
Developer (Pragmatic Programmers)
Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java (Pragmatic
Programmers)
Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional
(Apress)
Groovy Programming: An Introduction for Java Developers
(Morgan Kaufmann)
Groovy and Grails Recipes: Recipes a Dynamic Approach
(Apress)
The Definitive Guide to Grails (Apress)
The Definitive Guide to Grails: Second Edition (Apress)
Getting Started with Grails (Lulu.com)

14. Who Uses Groovy?
Mule ESB
ServiceMix ESB
Spring
Grails
LinkedI