I've been reading articles on Functional programming everyday and been trying to apply some practices as much as possible. But I don't understand what is unique in currying or partial application.

Take this Groovy code as an example:

def mul = { a, b -> a * b }
def tripler1 = mul.curry(3)
def tripler2 = { mul(3, it) }

I do not understand what is the difference between tripler1 and tripler2. Aren't they both the same? The 'currying' is supported in pure or partial functional languages like Groovy, Scala, Haskell etc. But I can do the same thing (left-curry, right-curry, n-curry or partial application) by simply creating another named or anonymous function or closure that will forward the parameters to the original function (like tripler2) in most languages (even C.)

Am I missing something here? There are places where I can use currying and partial application in my Grails application but I am hesitating to do so because I'm asking myself "How's that different?"

Please enlighten me.