to better handle situations like this. To this method, we can recommend the size to use for the hashmap, specify upper and lower bounds, etc. Groovy is quite versatile in a number of ways we just looked at one feature in this article. The dynamic nature of Groovy, its metaprogramming capabilities, convenience functions like the one we saw, and the ability to fine-tune between dynamic and static typing, all make it quite an interesting and powerful language for programming on the JVM. Groovy 2.0 was released recently and it’s gearing up for the next release 2.1 this month. You can find out more about the language at groovy.codehaus.org [U2]. If you’d like to indulge in the latest updates of this language, you might check out the recently released Programming Groovy 2nd Edition [U3], updated to the latest version of Groovy. About the Author Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., and an adjunct faculty at the University of Houston. He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects. Venkat is the author of .NET Gotchas, the coauthor of 2007 Jolt Productivity Award winning Practices of an Agile Developer [U4], the author of Programming Groovy 2nd Edition [U5], Programming Scala: Tackle Multi-Core Complexity on the Java Virtual Machine [U6], and Programming Concurrency on the JVM: Mastering synchronization, STM, and Actors [U7]. Send the author your feedback [U8] or discuss the article in the magazine forum [U9]. External resources referenced in this article: [U1] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/vslg2/programming-groovy [U2] http://groovy.codehaus.org [U3] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/vslg2/programming-groovy [U4] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/pad/practices-of-an-agile-developer [U5] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/vslg2/programming-groovy [U6] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/vsscala/programming-scala [U7] http://pragprog.com/refer/pragpub43/titles/vspcon/programming-concurrency-on-the-jvm [U8] mailto:michael@pragprog.com?subject=groovy [U9] http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/134 PragPub January 2013 21