Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 134 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#12

Post by manishsharan »

I don't hate Scala but I did not pursue it after only a few 'lessons' : transitioning from Java to Scala was smooth and not intellectually stimulating. On the other hand , Clojure programming forces me to think differently and the solutions are more elegant. I understand Scala is also functional but it is too permissive and I slide back in imperative all too easily. Clojure is highly disciplinarian and opinionated and I find that refreshing.

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#14

Post by timclark »

In my opinion (and I have worked on large scale development in Scala in the past) it is just unnecessarily complicated.

Random annoyances off the top of my head - you can't necessarily understand an isolated function unless you know what implicits are being used, crazy overuse of operator overloading and slow compilation times (this has improved over the years).

You don't have to learn Scala, you could learn Clojure, F#, OCaml or Haskell. They would all teach you interesting aspects of programming and then you could come back and examine Scala with a broader perspective.

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#16

Post by rikf »

I dabbled in scala for a while a few years ago and ultimately decided not to invest the time becoming an expert in it for the following reasons. 1) Slow compile times, I really value fast feedback and if it takes me over a second to compile and run a unit test that just doesn't cut it for me. 2) No clear idiomatic style and having many different ways of doing things each of which can imply different behaviour in different contexts.

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#17

Post by tormeh »

modersky wrote: post #7
jermo wrote: post #3

Here's one: http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.scala.debate/month=201... Apart from occasional issues in the community Scala is criticised for being too complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ

You realize that the sender of this post (a) has been banned from all Scala mailing lists (b) has become one of the strongest Scala haters since?

Doesn't Paul Phillips still use Scala? He's actually forked the Scala compiler: https://github.com/paulp/policy

I think Paul Phillips agree with the overall direction of Scala and thinks it's the best programming language out there, but disagrees on design details and compiler inner workings.

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#18

Post by wheaties »

timclark wrote: post #14

In my opinion (and I have worked on large scale development in Scala in the past) it is just unnecessarily complicated. Random annoyances off the top of my head - you can't necessarily understand an isolated function unless you know what implicits are being used, crazy overuse of operator overloading and slow compilation times (this has improved over the years). You don't have to learn Scala, you could learn Clojure,…

That actually sounds like you encountered code that shouldn't have been or you had people using Scalaz (which has weird operators taken from Haskell, looking at you .)

Re: Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?

#20

Post by stewbrew »

hackerboos wrote: post #6

I wouldn't say hate. Scala is a OO-functional language, so it's bound to have people who dislike it from both of those camps. I started learning Scala (it got me into functional programming) but dumped it for the same reasons as Java. It's bloated. I also question Scala's longevity. I'm happily using Elixir and Clojure these days, but I mainly do web stuff so YMMV.

You question the longevity of Java and Scala, and this is why you use mini niche languages? Seriously.
Post reply on HN