> JVM can't do dynamic dispatch on multiple arguments

It can since Java 7, the instruction invokedynamic was added for this kind of stuff.

The implementation for Pattern Matching (the project Amber) [1] will use the very same instruction.

[1] https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/amber/pattern-match-...

Groovy has done dynamic dispatch this way for a decade now.

And if it wasn't for Gradle, it would have been forgotten for now.

The language that was supposed to replace Java in JEE and Spring.

What ever happened to it? I recall Groovy and Grails being pretty big in the Java world several years ago.

The interest died off, JUGs stop talking about it and everyone went back to Java, while some of us got money to port those projects back to Java.

Had it not been for Gradle, and there would be hardly a reason to learn it in 2021, other than historical interest.

Where I work we use Groovy heavily for testing (with the Spock Framework - which is amazing), in our Jenkins pipelines, and for Gradle Plugins in our build.

I see a pretty active community around it and lots of new releases (from the libraries and the language itself) coming up all the time. Your picture of Groovy being dead couldn't be more wrong in my experience.

A programming language is alive as long as there is one developer using it, doesn't mean it still matters at scale.

As mentioned, Gradle is still around.

Gradle is moving more and more towards kotlin

A language that will share Groovy's fate, when Google gets fed up with Android and uses either ChromeOS or Fuchsia to take its place.

This reminds me - a Java language architect was asked what his favorite non-Java JVM language is. He said Clojure because it's not trying to just be a "better Java".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyTH8uCziI4&t=2896

> Another thing I'd like to see changed is better support for DSL's

I keep waiting for a good solution for SQL in Java (or another language) that isn't a builder or a string with templating. I don't like what React does architecturally, but JSX shows how mixing languages in an elegant-ish way can be huge.

Checkout jooq(1) for a SQL DSL in Java. I've used it with MySQL and love it. Trying to convince my employer for the paid version with RDS.

[1] http://www.jooq.org/

we use jooq extensively it's probably the most valuable tech in our backend.

Also among various other tech stacks I've never seen something that hits the sweet spot between "plain sql" and "advantages of ORM-stuff" as well as jooq

Also, props to the primary developer Lucas, who directly replied to my questions within a day, twice

String templating elevated to "tagged templates" [0] which dispatches template on your own function is suprisingly acceptable solution. I'm using it to drive mssql sql generation [1] and it works really well with type system around combinators. It's perfect, extremely lightweight way to achieve embedded dsl like experience.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... [1] https://github.com/appliedblockchain/tsql

You and the PC probably would be happy with Groovy, specially with them adding a SQL DSL now: https://github.com/apache/groovy/blob/master/subprojects/gro...

Groovy DSLs are much better than Kotlin's.

Gradle, perhaps unfairly, left me not liking Groovy.

We had that in the past, SQLJ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQLJ

Exposed is a Kotlin SQL library that you might be interested in.

PL/SQL?

It sounds like you are describing Groovy (which was mature even before Kotlin BTW).

I actually think that once you have Kotlin on top, it might open the door to another VM or bytecode generator. What's the point of having that abstraction if you're so tied to some other company VM?