I'm a big Groovy enthusiast, but I only use it myself for build/deploy scripts.

A real pro demonstrated Groovy's power last night:

Paul Woods ran us through 90 minutes of groovy features last night, and demonstrated how powerful the language can be in the hands of someone who works with it exclusively every day for a year. Read more »

Closures, builders, constructs such as these can save you some time, once you learn groovy. 

How much time is debatable, because I don't type a lot even when I'm writing Java. Once I define something in Java it's two characters and control space in the IDE, I never type it again. I don't even type it the first time, usually everything is just named a close variation of the class name, which the IDE does for me, with control-space. But already I digress.  Read more »

As a developer, how much time do I spend adding value, and how much time maintaining infrastructure ?

Sometimes my estimate goes like this

• Adding Value: 20% of my time
• Maintaining Infrastructure 80% of my time

Really I have no idea, but sometimes it seems like it really is lopsided. Read more »