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

Reasonable Scala Compiler

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 161 posts

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#31

Post by hasenj »

mintplant wrote: post #7
hota_mazi wrote: post #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.

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.

> Funny you should mention Kotlin, as it's the result of JetBrains doing just that: developing their own language to write their apps.

JetBrains is in the business of IDEs and similar programmer tools. Kotlin fits right in with the rest of their business.

Imagine if JetBrains produced a chatting program, because their engineers were not satisfied with the existing options.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#32

Post by ptx »

jmnicolas wrote: post #29

Doesn't Scala run on the JVM ? Are they talking about JIT times or are there other Scala 'environment' that are not semi-interpreted ?

They are talking about compilation of source code to Java byte code, i.e. the same kind of compiler as javac from the JDK. (There is also Scala Native, but that doesn't seem to be what this is about.)

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#33

Post by hasenj »

carlosdp wrote: post #4
hota_mazi wrote: post #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.

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.

> Hack/HHVM was developed by Facebook to modernize PHP.

Yes but why use PHP in the first place? It's not the right tool for something like Facebook.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#34

Post by hasenj »

hota_mazi wrote: post #6
yawaramin wrote: post #5

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.

Not to mention they can also decide laters to add new features to this new language, further diverging from Scala.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#35

Post by majidazimi »

This truly means we still lack a programming language with:

    1. reasonable support of object oriented programming.
    2. reasonable support of functional programming.
    3. solid concurrency features.
    4. runs comparable to native code.
    5. simple to learn.
Even though it is not difficult to create such a language but we see a new language poping out every now and then and none of them try to solve these issues.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#36

Post by banjoriver »

hasenj wrote: post #31
mintplant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Funny you should mention Kotlin, as it's the result of JetBrains doing just that: developing their own language to write their apps. JetBrains is in the business of IDEs and similar programmer tools. Kotlin fits right in with the rest of their business. Imagine if JetBrains produced a chatting program, because their engineers were not satisfied with the existing options.

You mean something like this: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/233-idetalk

:)

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#37

Post by adamnemecek »

majidazimi wrote: post #35

This truly means we still lack a programming language with: 1. reasonable support of object oriented programming. 2. reasonable support of functional programming. 3. solid concurrency features. 4. runs comparable to native code. 5. simple to learn. Even though it is not difficult to create such a language but we see a new language poping out every now and then and none of them try to solve these issues.

Rust, swift and kotlin once they have the llvm backend will fit the bill.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#38

Post by jonathanyc »

majidazimi wrote: post #35

This truly means we still lack a programming language with: 1. reasonable support of object oriented programming. 2. reasonable support of functional programming. 3. solid concurrency features. 4. runs comparable to native code. 5. simple to learn. Even though it is not difficult to create such a language but we see a new language poping out every now and then and none of them try to solve these issues.

It seems to me like OCaml has all of those features except for #3 (which admittedly is pretty frustrating to me too). What do you think?

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#39

Post by jonathanyc »

adamnemecek wrote: post #37
majidazimi wrote: post #35

This truly means we still lack a programming language with: 1. reasonable support of object oriented programming. 2. reasonable support of functional programming. 3. solid concurrency features. 4. runs comparable to native code. 5. simple to learn. Even though it is not difficult to create such a language but we see a new language poping out every now and then and none of them try to solve these issues.

Rust, swift and kotlin once they have the llvm backend will fit the bill.

Rust is very neat, but it lacks OO features.

Re: Reasonable Scala Compiler

#40

Post by bmc7505 »

majidazimi wrote: post #35

This truly means we still lack a programming language with: 1. reasonable support of object oriented programming. 2. reasonable support of functional programming. 3. solid concurrency features. 4. runs comparable to native code. 5. simple to learn. Even though it is not difficult to create such a language but we see a new language poping out every now and then and none of them try to solve these issues.

Kotlin?

1. OOP: https://www.packtpub.com/mapt/book/application_development/9...

2. FP: https://blog.plan99.net/kotlin-fp-3bf63a17d64a

3. Concurrency: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines.html

4. Native: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native

5. Simple: https://try.kotlinlang.org/

Post reply on HN