Live data from Hacker News

Reasonable Scala Compiler

github.com

1–10 of 161 posts

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#2
I am a bit concerned that between the Scala, Dotty, Typelevel, and now the Reasonable Scala Compiler, that the Scala community might become fragmented. Hopefully the rsc's claim of "making our findings available to the Scala community at large" holds true.

Edit: should have keep reading before commenting. In their related work document:

>we are definitely not declaring Lightbend Scala dead. To the contrary, we view ourselves as complementary to Lightbend Scala and hope that our results will create new opportunities for the official compiler. We are planning to keep in contact with Lightbend to discuss our findings and facilitate technology transfer.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#3
Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps.

Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen.

I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#4

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

That's... not true. You mention Kotlin, that was developed by JetBrains as a better language to develop Intellij and plugins.

Hack/HHVM was developed by Facebook to modernize PHP.

There are plenty of cases where organizations successfully developed their own languages/compilers that gave them advantages. It's insane only if you have no good reason to do it. This sounds like they have a need: compile times are slow.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#5

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

It's not a new language, it's a reduced subset of the same language.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#6

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

It's not a new language, it's a reduced subset of the same language.

You're playing with words. They are creating their own language which is a subset of Scala, and they decide which features to keep based on whether they are fast enough to compile.

The point is: developing your own language to ship your apps is crazy.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#7

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

Funny you should mention Kotlin, as it's the result of JetBrains doing just that: developing their own language to write their apps. Mozilla represents another successful example with Rust.

I'm of the opinion that developing new, purpose-built languages (or extending existing ones) is a strategy that isn't given as much consideration as it should.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#8
post #4

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

That's... not true. You mention Kotlin, that was developed by JetBrains as a better language to develop Intellij and plugins. Hack/HHVM was developed by Facebook to modernize PHP. There are plenty of cases where organizations successfully developed their own languages/compilers that gave them advantages. It's insane only if you have no good reason to do it. This sounds like they have a need: compile times are slow.

you think compile times are so slow that they're saving time by writing a whole language? I'd like to see the numbers on that...

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#9
post #4

Regardless of Scala, it's an absolutely insane idea to develop your own language to write your apps. Either stick to the real Scala or switch to Java or Kotlin, but writing your own language is a failure waiting to happen. I give this project a few more months before it gets canceled.

That's... not true. You mention Kotlin, that was developed by JetBrains as a better language to develop Intellij and plugins. Hack/HHVM was developed by Facebook to modernize PHP. There are plenty of cases where organizations successfully developed their own languages/compilers that gave them advantages. It's insane only if you have no good reason to do it. This sounds like they have a need: compile times are slow.

JetBrains' business and expertise is language stuff, lexers, compilers--isn't it fair to give them a pass on making a language?

One needn't extend the same consideration to, say, fogcreek...

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a new language, it's a reduced subset of the same language.

You're playing with words. They are creating their own language which is a subset of Scala, and they decide which features to keep based on whether they are fast enough to compile. The point is: developing your own language to ship your apps is crazy.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN