[green]

I know couple friends who are using Java applications and combine nicely with Groovy/Grails, though, as for the trends -- it's loosing it's place. I hear more and more about Scala/Lift -- but personally do not like Lift. It's not ready for the prime time (in my opinion) -- very young and productivity not even getting close to PHP/Symfony or Ruby/Rails. Why would you choose Grails? Scala does better integration with Java. JRuby works fine in container too. Is Groovy superior language? I have doubts. Just another one. Not too popular, even.

I do not think that there is something embracing in doing PHP coding, but I would choose Zend probably. Symfony's productivity is high, but performance - in many tests it goes beyond (slow by itself, we all know that) Ruby/Rails. Zend is good, but with more flexibility it gives more chances to make mistakes. ;-)

Enterprise applications mostly run with Java, no matter what. ;-)

[dreur]

Thanks you made some good points here.

But since Groovy and Grails are now part of SpringSource, I think it's popularity will grow.

[green]

I don't think so. Again, it's only me, but did you try Spring/Hibernate with annotations? There is really not much sense for an experienced Java developer to jump into Groovy. I do not see it, really. Scala is good, as a language. Syntax is horrible, but some people adore it. ;-) Why Groovy? It's been around for a while. Sometimes it's all about momentum. I have doubts it will get another chance to shine with SpringSource or anything else. Just too many other options available around. Why not Jython/Django? Why not Jruby/rails? Still Scala/Lift. It's all in JVM.