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

Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

codemonkeyism.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–16 of 16 posts

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#11

Post by lhnn »

This sentiment is how I felt about Grails a while back.

I think the big issue is versioning. Learn it! A.B.C

Changes in C denote bugfixes, small changes, etc.

Changes in B denote feature additions/deprecations, non-API breaking changes, etc.

Changes in A denote major architecture changes and/or backwards incompatibility.

THUS:

Everything with "A.x.x" is compatible with previous versions of A.x.x.

Everything with "A.B.x" is compatible with everything else of A.B.x.

As the author stated, Scala 2.8 should have been Scala 3.0. It seems to me the author is less peeved about the change itself, than the confusion caused by not using version numbers the way many people expect, i.e. with meaning.

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#12

Post by cageface »

CCs wrote: post #4

We are using 2.8.0 in production and so far it is OK. Porting old 2.7.x code to 2.8 is painful, but new code works as advertised. Still pain: the only working IDE is Emacs+ENSIME, documentation is scarce, learning curve is very steep. On the other hand it will force you to hire only top developers, which is a good thing. :) I'm still not sure if I shouldn't pick C++0x instead (really). I wish there was a C++ port of…

I'm used to doing everything in emacs anyway, so the IDE issue wasn't much of a hindrance. I didn't find the learning curve all that steep either, although I do have some prior experience with other functional languages. Overall I found Scala an extremely nice language to work with.

I've put it on the back burner for now though because the job market is still so tiny. If I see more people looking for Scala skills I'll make it a priority again.

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#13

Post by endtime »

>Would love to use C# if it’s not from MS.

I find it hard to take someone with an opinion like this seriously. C#/.NET/CLR is a fantastic platform, and if it does what you want (and Mono is sufficient for your cross-platform needs) then that's all that should matter.

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#14

Post by srnm »

CCs wrote: post #4

We are using 2.8.0 in production and so far it is OK. Porting old 2.7.x code to 2.8 is painful, but new code works as advertised. Still pain: the only working IDE is Emacs+ENSIME, documentation is scarce, learning curve is very steep. On the other hand it will force you to hire only top developers, which is a good thing. :) I'm still not sure if I shouldn't pick C++0x instead (really). I wish there was a C++ port of…

http://www.scala-ide.org has come a long way and can be usable and useful. I recommend a clean install of eclipse 3.5.2 with the latest recommended build of scala-ide. Try things out without installing additional plugins except your favorite version control support. I like the refactoring and code reformatting support!

I've recently started using the IntelliJ EAP X builds for a personal project in Scala and find it usable and useful too.

The maven-scala-plugin is solid and will let you switch between IntelliJ and Eclipse relatively easily. I don't use the maven eclipse plugin but instead "mvn eclipse:eclipse" from the command line whenever the pom changes. Using a pom-based build is useful in a production environment especially if you are using/providing components from/for others. IntelliJ has maven support built-in and seems to work well.

I've only pushed the IDEs to ~40 source files. Things might start breaking as the projects get bigger.

Things are definitely better than they were a year ago and thanks to both the scala-ide and IntelliJ people!

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#15

Post by gtani »

srnm wrote: post #14
CCs wrote: post #4

We are using 2.8.0 in production and so far it is OK. Porting old 2.7.x code to 2.8 is painful, but new code works as advertised. Still pain: the only working IDE is Emacs+ENSIME, documentation is scarce, learning curve is very steep. On the other hand it will force you to hire only top developers, which is a good thing. :) I'm still not sure if I shouldn't pick C++0x instead (really). I wish there was a C++ port of…

http://www.scala-ide.org has come a long way and can be usable and useful. I recommend a clean install of eclipse 3.5.2 with the latest recommended build of scala-ide. Try things out without installing additional plugins except your favorite version control support. I like the refactoring and code reformatting support! I've recently started using the IntelliJ EAP X builds for a personal project in Scala and find it u…

Haven't used IDEA/scala plugin in a few weeks, but i did have to mess with heap and other config options per:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438408

http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/snapimpact/IDEA_9CE_Tip

http://leshazlewood.com/2007/08/01/intellij-idea-on-mac-os-x...

Re: Scala is Unfit for Serious Development

#16

Post by xiongchiamiov »

lhnn wrote: post #11

This sentiment is how I felt about Grails a while back. I think the big issue is versioning. Learn it! A.B.C Changes in C denote bugfixes, small changes, etc. Changes in B denote feature additions/deprecations, non-API breaking changes, etc. Changes in A denote major architecture changes and/or backwards incompatibility. THUS: Everything with "A.x.x" is compatible with previous versions of A.x.x. Everything with "A.B…

If you like this a bit more formalized, take a look at Semantic Versioning ( http://semver.org/ ).

That's one of my primary issues with Ruby.

Post reply on HN