I like Alex's ideas. Yes, it does limit what Groovy can do in certain siturations but

1. it's optional, so the developer does this of his/her own volition, not due to any language constraints. 2. How invasive is this change? Is it really just a new annotation and some hooks in the compiler? Or does it require changes to the runtime too?

To me this seems like just another tool. It doesn't force Groovy in any direction. It just gives the developer more options. They can use it, or choose not to. Yes, it would cause some things to not work (i.e. libs that rely on runtime-dynamic stuff like GORM) but it would allow other situations to use Groovy's great syntax and some (most?) of its features without resorting to Java. Why not give the developer this tool (with the caveat that it is not a "magic speed-up button") and allow them to use it or not?

I think that if we can suddenly have ~90% of Java's speed with such a (seemingly) simple change, it would be well worth it. I would definitely prefer to write "static, annotated Groovy" versus Java.

-Tom

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