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Towards Scala 3

scala-lang.org

11–20 of 383 posts

Re: Towards Scala 3

#12
post #9

My big question (not answered in the FAQ) is will it be faster or slower than Scala 2.12? Having worked on a big Scala codebase, the slow compiler speed is one of the biggest downsides to the language.

There was experimental work to see how fast a scala compiler could be, but I think it's still far from production ready, was more of an experimente: https://github.com/gkossakowski/kentuckymule

Re: Towards Scala 3

#13
This major breaking change to the language reminds me a lot of the Py2-Py3 fiasco. I wonder how Scala's community will handle the transition given the previous issues with cross compilation in the 2.x series. Given the multitude of language alternatives in a similar space to Scala, I'm worried. Fingers crossed they can work through this.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#14
post #2

Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more. Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or oth…

F# only has access to a subset of .NET deployment scenarios, where Scala can be used pretty much everywhere there is a JVM.

So most companies actually are more keen to bet on Scala than F#.

OCaml/Reason world lacks the wealth of Java libraries, which are an import away on Scala.

Regarding Kotlin, so far its killer use case is targeting Android, where one is stuck with an ageing Java subset. Outside of Android, it remains to be seen how it will keep up with the Java improvements coming up every 6 months now.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#16
post #9

My big question (not answered in the FAQ) is will it be faster or slower than Scala 2.12? Having worked on a big Scala codebase, the slow compiler speed is one of the biggest downsides to the language.

It's currently about as fast as Scala 2.12, which means it compiles at roughly 3000 lines/sec. However, it supports more aggressive incremental compilation than Scala 2 so at least in my projects, which are typically 50K to 100K lines, most compiles are under a second, and I rarely see compile times over 5 seconds.

There's ongoing performance work to make both Scala 2 and Scala 3 faster than they are now. A lot of what people perceive as slow compile times are actually other factors (such as inefficient macros or slow build tools).

Re: Towards Scala 3

#17
post #2

Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more. Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or oth…

Scala has an insanely productive and efficient streaming ecosystem with the likes of Kafka and Akka streams. You can use those with other languages but it's not nearly as nice.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#18
post #14
post #2

Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more. Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or oth…

F# only has access to a subset of .NET deployment scenarios, where Scala can be used pretty much everywhere there is a JVM. So most companies actually are more keen to bet on Scala than F#. OCaml/Reason world lacks the wealth of Java libraries, which are an import away on Scala. Regarding Kotlin, so far its killer use case is targeting Android, where one is stuck with an ageing Java subset. Outside of Android, it rem…

Not only on JVM, scala can be used in the browser with scala.js or without a JVM with scala native.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#19
post #14
post #2

Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more. Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or oth…

F# only has access to a subset of .NET deployment scenarios, where Scala can be used pretty much everywhere there is a JVM. So most companies actually are more keen to bet on Scala than F#. OCaml/Reason world lacks the wealth of Java libraries, which are an import away on Scala. Regarding Kotlin, so far its killer use case is targeting Android, where one is stuck with an ageing Java subset. Outside of Android, it rem…

> F# only has access to a subset of .NET deployment scenarios

And what subset would that be? The only place you can't use F# IIRC is UWP application which is likely not the deciding factor in choosing F# or Scala.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#20
post #2

Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more. Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or oth…

Here's one datapoint: AutoScout24 (the vehicle vertical of Scout24, a Europe-based digital marketplace) has fully committed to Scala a couple of years ago as part of a re-platforming (microservices on AWS). It's still the recommended default language.

Not a "big" company by global standards, but not small either, with around 120 engineers.

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