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Towards Scala 3

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Re: Towards Scala 3

#321

Post by eeperson »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #247
benjaminjackman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow emigrant of `Scala is the best island` forced off for pragmatic reasons. I've been around scala long enough to see the rise and fall of multiple expeditions into the bowels of the OSGI eclipse cave of horrors (Sean McDirmid / Miles Sabin etc). Before switching horses and settling in Intellij for several years. So I understand where you are coming from. I've since jumped ship again to vscode (along with ty…

Not sure if you read it in the article, but Scala 3 will have LSP support (if it doesn't already).

It already has support although it is not complete: http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/usage/ide-support.html

Re: Towards Scala 3

#322

Post by hota_mazi »

stephen wrote: post #230
munificent wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TypeScript has a comparatively easier job because the type system is unsound. They can add new type features without needing to be paranoid about a hole in the system or a usability pitfall because the tools don't rely on types for correctness or optimization, and because users can easily cast to "any" or otherwise work around an annoyance. When you want the whole system to actually deeply rely on the static type sys…

Good point; I've mused before that dynamic languages will always be a ~generation ahead of static languages, due to what you point out, that type systems are hard, and very few people start working on a new type system as their hobby project (vs. hacking out a new syntax with an interpreter). But I hadn't appreciated the difference in difficulty between an unsound type system like TS and Scala's type system... I gues…

> I've mused before that dynamic languages will always be a ~generation ahead of static language

Did you mean "behind"?

The trend is pretty clear: dynamically typed languages are disappearing and all the popular modern languages are statically typed with type inference.

Most dynamically typed languages are busy adding static safety through gradual or opt-in typing, but you don't see the other way around.

Javascript will probably be the last major dynamically typed language we ever had to use.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#323

Post by eeperson »

lmm wrote: post #143
coryfklein wrote: post #114

So many cool things already done and even more to come. Some parts that excite me as a Scala nerd: * One can now use implicit function types to basically build your own table language syntax that is type-safe. [1] * Multiversal Equality: you get to decide whether it makes any sense to compare an Apple and an Orange using "==" or "!=", as opposed to Java's forced requirement of allowing you to compare anything with an…

> * Multiversal Equality: you get to decide whether it makes any sense to compare an Apple and an Orange using "==" or "!=", as opposed to Java's forced requirement of allowing you to compare anything with anything. [2] Unfortunately it's being introduced in a fail-unsafe way that as far as I can see makes it virtually useless. If I see "x == y" in code, I have no way to be confident that this isn't an old-fashioned…

It looks like you can force strict equality everywhere with the flag '-language:strictEquality'. See the dotty documentation for more details: http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/multiversal-equality.htm...

EDIT just realized you are m50d on reddit and probably saw the exact same comment I got that from.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#324

Post by yawaramin »

nradov wrote: post #318
DandyDev wrote: post #174

It's amazing how many people in this thread justify their own language choices by making negative, sweeping statements about another language (Scala in this case) that is successfully used by people other than themselves. Yes, some people who previously used Scala, now use Kotlin. And some people who would've used Scala if Kotlin didn't exist, use Kotlin. Same probably goes for Rust. But there is a big enough market…

Part of the issue with alternative JVM languages is that there isn't a good standard way to mix them within a single application. There are various compatibility layers for calling foreign functions but nothing baked into the lower-level platform. So that forces a degree of competition and mutual exclusion. Whereas with Microsoft's .NET CLR there's a standard calling convention supported by all the languages. So it's…

HN throws away all Unicode symbols.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#325

Post by seanmcdirmid »

lmm wrote: post #127
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why Kotlin is gaining marketshare is specifically because they aren’t chasing after things like HKTs. Kotlin is squarely going after the better Java market and not the advanced FP one.

I think Kotlin's design - adding lots of ad-hoc support for specific use cases but without the underlying general constructs that make them coherent - will come to bite them as and when the language needs to evolve over time. (Indeed to a certain extent it already has, as Java 8+ adopts Options which don't play nice with Kotlin's ?. etc.) I guess we'll see how things look in a few years.

? actually should play nicely with explicit Option types, they do in C# anyways.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#326

Post by yawaramin »

jowiar wrote: post #142
YorkshireSeason wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell is category theory as a language. I disagree with this. Haskell's creation [1, 2] predates the realisation (by the FP community at large) of the close connection between parts of category theory and parts of pure functional programming, which happened in the 1990s, perhaps driven by Moggi's realisation that monads are a fundamental abstraction in computation that can reconcile effects with pure functional com…

Would love to see a citation re: Odersky (or if he'd chime in here). My general assumption is that if Scala was intended to be category theory, implemented, something along the lines of scalaz or cats would have been built into the language -- the philosophy of the language does not include a JS-esque philosophy of small stdlib, big library ecosystem.

See this talk https://youtu.be/P8jrvyxHodU

He mentions module systems fairly early on.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#327

Post by bjterry »

coryfklein wrote: post #283
naasking wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that option documented somewhere? I imagine there are some tradeoffs with enabling it.

The major tradeoff, IMO, is that it is even toggle-able at all, let alone being a feature switch that is enabled by default. If you enter any random TS project today, odds are it isn't using that switch, and enabling the switch will lead you down a month long rabbit-hole of fixing cascading type errors.

Not only that, but since it isn't required many libraries in the ecosystem won't be using it. Comparing my experiences with TypeScript and Flow vs. my experiences with Haskell, any optional type system is going to leave a lot of gaps if you don't have a pretty strict not-invented-here culture.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#328

Post by yawaramin »

lmm wrote: post #298
throwawayjava wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone use Scala in cases where OCaml is a viable option? My impression has always been that Scala is "better than OCaml if you need the JVM"

I don't like having to give up full type inference, but it's much better than having to give up HKT.

You can get close enough to HKT with OCaml that you don't really feel any pain there. We have our share of generic monad libraries.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#329

Post by pron »

lmm wrote: post #192
DandyDev wrote: post #174

It's amazing how many people in this thread justify their own language choices by making negative, sweeping statements about another language (Scala in this case) that is successfully used by people other than themselves. Yes, some people who previously used Scala, now use Kotlin. And some people who would've used Scala if Kotlin didn't exist, use Kotlin. Same probably goes for Rust. But there is a big enough market…

The reality is that a language lives or dies by its ecosystem - particularly when it comes to a language like Scala that's in a tightly symbiotic relationship with its IDEs (the next time someone tries to sell you a "visual programming language", look at Scala for a language that makes really effective use of the GUI for programming without compromising the things that make textual programming languages good - see e.…

I understand your strategic motivation, but to convince people your language is best, saying "my language is better than X" can be a very bad tactic. The reason is that most programmers aren't big PL fans, and that, to be honest, language choice (among various more-or-less suitable options) has a negligible -- if any -- effect on a business's bottom line. The biggest effect is on programmer enjoyment, as there are (perhaps unfortunately) many programmers who feel that their programming language does affect their satisfaction from programming. Such a preference for a language is often largely personal, but you can make your language more or less attractive to certain crowds. Creating a combative, competitive atmosphere, often results in a very fervent community, but usually not a large one, as such an atmosphere doesn't have a broad appeal. To increase the appeal of a language, the best things you can do is create great tooling, lots of useful libraries, and a friendly community.

In addition, an argument for "my language is better than X" can usually be easily countered with an argument for the opposite, creating a net result that doesn't help your goals. Debates are sometimes interesting and informative, but they're not effective marketing.

Re: Towards Scala 3

#330

Post by yawaramin »

saosebastiao wrote: post #152
nnq wrote: 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…

I still think Scala is a better better-jav than Kotlin, but Kotlin captures that market better because of the much lower learning overhead. I'm much more of an ML-style programmer, but the thing keeping me away from OCaml is the lack of a multicore runtime. Not only is Scala's concurrency mature and performant, implicits (like having an ExecutionContext) make it extremely easy to use. Even if OCaml released it's mult…

OCaml fully supports OOP (the 'O' in OCaml).
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