I'm curious how this will evolve in the Groovy culture / ecosystem. Will using static type checking become a best practice, with people 'falling back' to dynamic typing only when necessary? Or will people keep using it dynamically, except for "those Java weirdos who don't know any better"?

I don't know about others, but I'm thinking I would turn on static typing when I think I'm done developing something (as a way of verifying my code is correct).

Why all the hype around the "release" of Groovy 2.0, what with the OP's h-online link, one at jaxenter (http://jaxenter.com/groovy-2-0-is-finally-here-interview-wit...), one at InfoQ(http://www.infoq.com/articles/new-groovy-20), and the barrage of emails and cross-postings, all within a day of each other? Makes me wonder if the VMWare-employed marketers behind it all are on some sort of performance incentive.

It's the extreme opposite of the release of quality products like Linux and Clojure, both "announced" with low-key mentions in emails.

Looks like a stop gap for Java 8 (the static portion that is). Please Oracle let me have my closures sooner so the .NET programmers will stop making fun of us :)