Every year brings with it new technologies, this year is of course is no different. One of the biggest changes I have seen this year though, which did not really hit till the end of the year, is some of the dynamic languages in Java, specifically Groovy.

Groovy has come a long way and with the 1.5 release over the weekend it their are new meta-programming capabilities and better support for DSLs. All of this is supposed to help the Grails framework. And if you have used both you will really see the Ruby influences mixed with Java standards. (their are of course many additions since this is a 1.5 release (from 1.0)).

The real power of course I see is with Groovy's 100% support in Grails (of course) and even JBoss Seam. Besides Seam just being a good tool to bridge the gap between JSF and EJB3 it has quite a bit of support for ease when doing jBPM (JBoss' business process management system which can use drools as part of its decision making process).

I think this next year will be interesting to see if, now that the java dynamic languages have reached good maturity, will Groovy really start to grow in the Java community. The NoFluffJustStuff tour has even branched off with a G2 (groovy and grails) tour as well.

At any rate, whether you are a java, ruby, or python developer ... the exponential spread in popularity over the last 2 - 3 years of using languages dynamic languages with a good DSL is great for the community. Let's see what 2008 brings.