Groovy has supported compile-time safety since version 2.0 with the optional @CompileStatic annotation. It's one of the few languages where you can mix static and dynamic typing, even within the same class. With this annotation enabled, you get pretty close to pure Java performance but with 1/5 the lines of code in some case.
For something like Android, running Groovy with CompileStatic enabled by default would make a lot of sense.
> It's one of the few languages where you can mix static and dynamic typing
In theory, but in practise virtually everyone uses the dynamic typing only. Groovy's really only used with Grails and for testing Java classes.
> Android, running Groovy with CompileStatic enabled by default would make a lot of sense
Unlike other statically-typed languages, Groovy's CompileStatic code was written by only one person and having it be the default would expose all the bugs.
Any optional and inconvenient feature in a programming language will never be used. It's why static typechecking in Python and Pypy and whatever will never take off.
Data stores: MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Postgres, Redis, Couchbase, Neo4J
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Spantree is a boutique software engineering firm based (mostly) in Chicago. We're looking for our very first DevOps engineer to join our team in the West Loop.
This candidate should enjoy learning new technologies and solving hard problems. Ideally, we're looking for someone that can whip or systems engineering stack into shape, taking over cross-cutting systems work that we each handle on our individual projects. Our existing team of 7 are mostly programmers. We've had to learn things tools Vagrant, Puppet and AWS to make our lives easier. But we're growing to the point where we could really use someone who lives and breathes this stuff.
We work quite a bit with OSS and we're not shy about jumping into other people's code to figure things out. We constantly hunt for smarter ways to do things, so we're often experimenting with emerging tech with little or no documentation. You should be motivated to submit pull requests and hunt down project committers on Twitter and IRC when you're stuck.
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Who are you?
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* A nice person
* An effective communicator face-to-face, on the phone, and over the web
* A pragmatic engineer that can quickly go from problem to solution to working software
* A lazy programmer who leverages test, build, and deployment automation wherever possible
* An confident teacher of what you know and a humble student of what you don't
* An altruist who wants to participate in open-source projects
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What do we work on?
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Our clients range from small and scrappy startups to large enterprise companies. We have 3-7 projects going at any point in time. We tend to focus on greenfield development, building web applications from the ground up. We also work on integrating the old with the new, bringing technologies like Elasticsearch, Grails and Drools to large companies.
Helping people make better decisions is the central theme of most of our projects. This can take the form of a search engine to help people find interesting stuff to do on a Saturday night, a complex rules-oriented workflow management system for evaluating health insurance claims, helping people find the right doctor, or a matchmaking and scheduling system to help people book face-to-face meetings at conferences.
In the next year or two, we also plan to get into product development, taking our experiences solving the same sort of problems for multiple clients and rolling them into a generic framework which we plan to open source and support directly for our clients and the rest of the world.
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We offer full health, vision and dental for our full-time employees. 401K. Free snacks and often free lunches as well. Big monitors and top-of-the-line equipment. We also have a shiny new office treadmill.
Drop us a line at jobs@spantree.net and tell us a bit about yourself. If you have a resume or CV, feel free to pass that along as well. Github and LinkedIn profiles are also helpful. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
We're Spantree, a small, nimble boutique consultancy based mostly in Chicago. We're looking for another smart person to join our team in the West Loop of Chicago. This candidate should enjoy learning new things and solving hard problems.
We work almost exclusively with open source software and we're not shy about jumping into third-party code to figure things out. You should be motivated to submit pull requests and hunt down project committers on Twitter and IRC when you're stuck.
Some of our favorite day-to-day technologies include Groovy, Grails, Elasticsearch, Drools, MongoDB, Backbone.js/Marionette, CoffeeScript and Puppet.
Our clients range from small and scrappy startups to large hospital networks and software as a service providers. Historically, most of the stuff we've worked on has not been public-facing: it's either guarded behind the client's firewall, neatly tucked away as a library or jammed into the minds of the developers we've mentored. But we're starting to diversify from "behind-the-scenes" work to more early-stage product development.
Fundamentally, we like to work on tools that helping people make better decisions. This can take the form of a search engine to help people find interesting stuff to do on a Saturday night, a complex workflow management system for evaluating health insurance claims or a matchmaking and scheduling system to help people book face-to-face meetings at conferences.
We're looking for generalists who can quickly go from problem to working solution and communicate effectively with our peers and clients along the way. While we have a very strong technical stack already, you don't expect new hires to be an expert in everything right away. In general, though, we're looking for people with the following qualifications:
* One or more fun languages: Ruby, Python, Groovy, Clojure, PHP, CoffeeScript, etc.
* One or more boring languages: Java, C++, C#, etc.
* One or more web frameworks: Grails, Rails, Django, SpringMVC, Play, CakePHP, etc.
* One or more databases: SQL, NoSQL, NewSQL, we like it all.
* HTML, CSS, JavaScript and at least one framework
* Git, or a colorful excuse for not knowing it.
* The typical software development toolchain: text editors, IDEs, step debuggers, issue trackers, etc.
If you'd like to learn more, please email jobs@spantree.net to set up a Google Hangout.
For something like Android, running Groovy with CompileStatic enabled by default would make a lot of sense.