Updated March 6, 2023
Difference Between Groovy and Scala
Scala is an acronym for Scalable Language. Scala is a general-purpose Object Oriented programming language that supports functional programming capabilities. Scala runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM); the source code is intended to be compiled to Java bytecode. Apache Groovy is an Object-Oriented programming language that runs on the Java Platform. Groovy can be used both as a programming language, and scripting language that runs on Java Platform, and the code is compiled to bytecode on Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
What is Scala?
- Scala has many functional programming language features such as Scheme, Standard ML, Lazy evaluation, pattern matching, etc.
- Scala also has an advanced type system supporting algebraic data types, covariance and contravariance, higher-order types, and anonymous types.
- Scala runs on JVM and has other compilers like Scala.js, which compiles Scala code to JavaScript.
What is Groovy?
- Groovy is both static and dynamic typing and supports various features like operator overloading, lists, and associative arrays, and many more; it also supports regular expressions.
- Groovy also supports various markup languages like HTML and XML.
- Groovy can use a lot of existing Java libraries.
Head To Head Comparison Between Groovy and Scala (Infographics)
Below is the top 8 difference between Groovy vs Scala:
Key Difference Between Groovy and Scala
As you can see, there is much difference between Groovy vs Scala. Let’s look at the top difference:
- Static Members: Groovy has a concept of static members and methods, whereas Scala doesn’t have the static concept; instead, it uses singleton objects in place of static members or methods.
- Syntax: Groovy provides native support for markup languages like XML and HTML using libraries like Grails, Glide etc., whereas Scala also provides the support for the markup languages through various libraries like Scala Tags, Udash, static tags, and many more.
- Overloading (Multi-Methods or Multiple dispatches): Multiple dispatches are nothing but having multiple methods with the same name but different parameters; that is nothing but the concept of overloading. Groovy supports multiple dispatches at the runtime due to the way it handles Java overloading, and Scala is single dispatch but uses pattern matching to deal with multiple dispatches.
- Learning Curve: Groovy is relatively simple and requires less time to learn, whereas Scala might take more time to ramp up on the language as it involves a lot of new things.
- Type checking: Groovy is dynamically typed; that is, type checking happened during the runtime, and Scala is statically typed here; type checking happened during compile time.
Groovy vs Scala Comparison Table
Below is the top Comparison between Groovy vs Scala.
| The basis of comparison | Groovy | Scala |
| Adoption | It can be used as a scripting language on top of java codebase such as in log configuration, in Gradle build framework etc. | It is commonly used to build an entire application in the big data domain. |
| Object-Oriented | It is not a pure object-oriented language | It is a pure object-oriented language |
| Compatibility with Java | It can use all the java libraries | It can use all the java libraries |
| Inheritance | Groovy supports multiple inheritances | Scala supports multiple inheritances using traits |
| Support for Markup language | It provides native support for languages like XML and HTML | It provides support for generating HTML docs using scalatex language |
| Access Modifiers | By default, the access modifier is public | In Scala, also by default, the access modifier is public |
| Test and Deploy | It has tools like Gradle and Spock that has become quite popular in the Java community and is used android development toolkit. | It has tools like Scala Test, SBT, Junit, etc., which are the most powerful framework on JVM. |
| Integrated Tools | It has tools like Java, Grails | It has tools like Java, Auth0, UDash, ScalaNLP, and many more |
Performance Table between Groovy vs Scala
Below is the Performance Table between Groovy vs Scala.
| Performance based on Groovy vs Scala | Groovy | Scala |
| IDE’s | Groovy has IDE’s like Groovy Eclipse, Groovy tool suite. The groovy tool suite is an Eclipse-based IDE that provides lots of metrics for the developers, and Groovy-Eclipse is from the eclipse foundation that provides a lot of inbuilt tools for developers. It provides better performance since it has a lot of IDE’s with a lot of inbuilt tools in it. |
Scala has IDE’s like Scala IDE for Eclipse and NetBeans.
Scala IDE for Eclipse provides dedicated support for developing pure Scala, and NetBeans IDE allows developers to quickly and easily develop desktop, mobile and web applications. Same with Scala as well |
| Concurrency and Parallelism | Groovy has one library called G Pars that offers concurrency and parallelism for the application. | Scala uses the JVM and does well on single-threaded performance; It also has libraries like Akka and Sparks that offers Machine Learning, futures, promises, data flow and actors. |
| Speed | Groovy is very slow to run due to its dynamic typing. But has a faster compile cycle | Scala is very slow to compile but has a faster execution cycle. |
| Ease of Use | Groovy is used for rapid prototyping and development. | Scala is used for developing full-fledged productive applications. |
Conclusion
As we have seen that there is a lot of difference between Groovy vs Scala, it is hard to say which programming language is better. Neither of them is better or worse than the others. Both Groovy vs Scala languages target two different classes of problems. Scala is a high-performance language that is very similar to Java but without much of the boilerplate code as java and has many features that java doesn’t. On the other hand, Groovy is used for developing prototypes where speed is less important than the time it takes for the programmers to implement the code. Based on the problem type, you can choose either of the languages for your development purpose.
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This has been a guide to the top difference between Groovy vs Scala. Here we also discuss the key differences with infographics and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more.
