Has anyone had experience with Grails? It looked pretty neat, but I didn't want to start delving into it just to find out that it is something that is not being used or developed all that much.
For those coming from PHP, Python and Rails the thought of using something based on Java frameworks may be a turnoff but I assure you all the boilerplating and configuration complexity is hidden away with the preference being the convention over configuration approach.
The beauty though is if you need to reach down and leverage some specifics you are free to do so, Grails doesn't tie your hands allowing you to have your cake and eat it to.
So in a nutshell, Grails gives you all the things you love with frameworks like Rails while under the Hood you can leverage the power of Java and all the supporting libraries and frameworks developed for it over the years. Anywhere it can go Grails&Groovy can go to (well almost). Oh and in terms of performance, the upcoming version of Groovy 2.0 will provide performance enhancements that will bring it seriously close to Java execution through static type checking and compilation. These two options are once again free to use or ignore as the developer sees fit.