Grails Class Starting July 8

[darren.cruse]

Just a note (possibly some of you know this already), Jack Frosch who
runs the Gateway Java User Group is teaching an 8 week Beginning
Groovy on Grails class starting Wednesday July 8th to be held at his
training facility in St. Peters.

More details here:

http://www.gatewayjug.org/jug-class---beginning-grails.html

This is designed as the first of a follow on "intermediate grails"
class:

http://www.gatewayjug.org/jug-class---intermediate-grails.html

Just FYI in case any of you might be interested or know of others who
would be,

Darren "I'd rather be doing Groovy or Scala but my bosses only let me
do Java" Cruse. :)

[Jack Frosch]

Darren,

Thanks for helping get the word out on this class. (http://
www.gatewayjug.org/jug-class---beginning-grails.html)

The Gateway JUG regularly holds group study classes so Java developers
can get together in a relaxed, low pressure environment and learn a
new API or framework. However, this is a bit of a departure for us.
After 7 or 8 years of doing Agile Java (Beginning Java + TDD) and Java
Web Developer group study classes, we decided to bring in a whole new
language and non-Java web framework.

While I'm far from being an expert in Grails or Groovy, I have been
working with it for some months now. I simply felt more Java
developers needed to see just how great the Grails framework really
is. It's "Convention over Configuration" approach, combined with
Groovy's reduced ceremony coding, make doing web development a real
joy.

For example, in our annual Winter/Spring Java Web Development group
study class, we cover the Servlet API, JavaServer Pages (JSP), and
JavaServer Faces (JSF), along with a taste of Struts and Spring. These
are the staples of Java web development in a JEE 5/6 environment.
However, we necessarily leave out Java persistence using an ORM like
Hibernate and/or JPA because there's just too little time to cover
what he must as well as Hibernate and/or JPA annotations with all of
the configuration and other "care and feeding" required. Yet, this
class will include persistence from day one because persistence is so
transparently integrated into GORM and Grails. It's just too cool.

As I've told many people, I think this is the way Java web development
should and would be done, if only Java didn't get in the way of doing
it this way. Alas, I know I'm preaching to the choir in this group.

We'll be sticking pretty close to our chosen text book, The Definitive
Guide to Grails (2nd Edition), by Graeme Rocher and St. Louis' own
Jeff Brown. It's comprehensive enough, yet easily understandable by
someone new to Groovy and Grails. We'll spend just a little time
covering a few Groovy essentials so Java developers can be productive
with Grails without drowning in Groovy minutia. The first lab will be
done with a basic editor and command line Grails, but we'll quickly
move to using JetBrain's IntelliJ IDEA since its Groovy/Grails
JetGroovy plug-in is very nicely done.

If you or someone you know would benefit from this class, register
asap so we can get the lab hardware setup for you before our
Wednesday, July 8th kick-off meeting at 7:00pm. (Normally, we'll meet
at 6pm on Wednesdays; however, I have a commercial JSF class next week
that runs until 7:00pm.)

Jack Frosch
President, Gateway JUG