Interesting scripting language for Java.

I had a quick look at groovy a few months back when it was announced on lambda. To be perfectly honest I wasn't particularly impressed. If I want a latent-typed, 'agile' scripting language, and don't want to fight too hard to be allowed to use it, I will use Jython; or if I'm writing for myself, or have a tech-savy boss, I'll use the scripting language, aka scheme (specifically: SISC or possibly JScheme). As far as I can tell it's just Yet Another Scripting Language. I mean, what's the point!?

Then I came across a comparison between groovy and another JVM scripting language, Nice. Bryn Keller does a quick comparison between groovy and nice on his blog. So what makes nice interesting, when groovy is so yawn-worthy? Well nice is statically typed! It looks like a serious attempt at dragging the java world into the world of real compile time type safety --- a world without NullPointer/ClassCastExceptions, and with the free-flowing syntactic style of your traditional latent-typed languages.

As an example compare the following (from the xoltar post):

Groovy

if (customer.orders.any { it.amount > 1000 && 
	it.product.type == "cheese"} ) {
  doSomething();
}

Nice

if (customers.orders.any(Order ord => ord.amount > 1000 && 
	ord.product.type == "cheese")) {
  doSomething();
}

Which given you can infer the type of ord from its use is intended to shortly become:

if (customers.orders.any(ord => ord.amount > 1000 && 
	ord.product.type == "cheese")) {
  doSomething();
}

Which differs from the groovy example in only the trivial matter of being able to name the parameter to the closure; and in the not-at-all-trivial matter that the compiler will ensure static type saftey at compile time!.

Just skimming the nice website, I still suspect I will find ML a nicer language, still a language targeted at interoperation with Java that supports: real parametric-types, proper closures, multiple-dispatch (goodbye visitor pattern ;), and tuples; all in a statically typed language with HM inferencing. What's not to like?