Live data from Hacker News

What's Next for Scala

lihaoyi.com

181–190 of 203 posts

Re: What's Next for Scala

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree here. Scala's language spec is smaller than javas, it's problems are akin to Lisps. Too many dsls, extensions and so on. It really opened the doors for FP concepts to go mainstream. Unfortunately, some people went way too far with it.

Brainfuck's spec fits in one page. As does Whitespace's spec. These two languages are impossible to write code in because of their complexity. It's completely mystifying to me that even today, Martin still uses the "spec size" argument in his keynotes to attempt to demonstrate that Scala is a simple language, and it demonstrates a complete ignorance of what language design actually is, or a troubling disingenuity mea…

Creator of Scala believes, and advocates, Scala is simpler than Java?

Wow.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#182
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comprehensions should alleviate the examples you have given with regards to readability. Although yes there are other more complex instances in which nested matches might come up. Generally I would think to handle them by creating a function that contains the next layer of matching instead of trying to come up with an uber function. Adds a bit more verbosity perhaps but I find it is fairly easy to follow and show…

My question was poorly phrased, since if you're using Option types, you're obviously already using monads, applicatives, and functors. What I should have asked was: if you're using monads such as Option, then how do you use them effectively without using integral tools such as flatMap? And you've answered: you can use for comprehensions. I primarily have used Haskell and OCaml, so I sometimes forget about Scala's ver…

> but I do think most people who are using options and for comprehensions would also be comfortable and happy using other useful monads with for comprehensions.

You seem to vastly underestimate the gap there is between using a for comprehension and understanding what a bifunctor is.

Nothing wrong with that: once you gain a certain advanced knowledge, it's often very hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who hasn't gained that knowledge, and even harder to explain it to them in terms that they will understand.

Which is why we have so many unhelpful monad tutorials.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#183
post #9

Since the post mentions Scala Native, all these guest language projects that eschew the platform that made them famous and try to pursue the dream of being their own platform, while building an ecosystem, GC and optimising compiler from scratch (even if they build on LLVM or compile via C/C++), would be much better taking advantage of AOT and JIT caches from several JVM implementations instead of pretending they don'…

Looking at the commit log, Scala Native looks pretty dead https://github.com/scala-native/scala-native/commits/master

Previous maintainer left EPFL so nothing was happening there. But Scala Center took over the project so they will start maintaining it. AFAIR snnouncement was on Gitter by the same guy who maintains Scala.js. I guess it will take some time for them to catch up with the rest.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#184
post #2

I'm particularly interested in how this plays out with dotty. My understanding was that lightbend was at some going to take over that compiler from EPFL, but taking over a compiler (the second, besides the current/old one) at the same time they are laying people off?

Announcement on Dotty as the future Scala 3 came from Scala Center (EPFL) not Typesafe/Lightbend. AFAIK Typesafe/Lightbend has made no commitment to Scala 3. Too bad the roadmap for Scala 2.14 has been scrapped.

2.14 was supposed to be a stepping stone between 2 and 3, released only so that migration could be easier. They skipped it because apparently source code differences between valid 2.13 and 3.0 aren't that great. From what I saw it is mostly about migrating macros, the rest most likely would still work.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#185
post #62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go is a competitor to Java in that most of the things people do with one, they could do with the other. As a Java guy, i would agree that Go is not actually competitive with Java. But then, a Go guy would probably say the opposite.

Really? Where are the Go versions of Spring, JEE, Android, Solr, Liferay, Kafka, Gemalto, microEJ, PTC, Aicas, Ricoh, Kyocera, Java Card, VisualVM, JFR, JMX and plenty of other stuff I haven't bothered to type?

I know people who would be sold on NO JEE, NO Spring, NO Hibernate. I am one of them. :)

Re: What's Next for Scala

#186
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding the necessity for libraries like many of these would be a key success criteria for a new language were I judging.

Then don't expect to actually take over Java on the domains it owns.

Why Java devs automatically assume that every new language is made to overthrow Java/C#? They might still to provide better development in a particular domain. Go or Python or JacaScript are good at rivaling Java at mainstream language, and so what?

Re: What's Next for Scala

#187
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should not have started with spring and jee

Not understanding why they exist is the first error trying to sell to enterprise.

Seeing how .Net is being sold to enterprises without such libraries I would say that they exist because business happily buys into any promise that something increases productivity even if that is just salesmen's lies. But it requires good salesmen not good engineers.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#188
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Where are the Go versions of Spring, JEE, Android, Solr, Liferay, Kafka, Gemalto, microEJ, PTC, Aicas, Ricoh, Kyocera, Java Card, VisualVM, JFR, JMX and plenty of other stuff I haven't bothered to type?

I know people who would be sold on NO JEE, NO Spring, NO Hibernate. I am one of them. :)

I have to say if they add generics without type erasure to go then Java is likely in trouble.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#189
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brainfuck's spec fits in one page. As does Whitespace's spec. These two languages are impossible to write code in because of their complexity. It's completely mystifying to me that even today, Martin still uses the "spec size" argument in his keynotes to attempt to demonstrate that Scala is a simple language, and it demonstrates a complete ignorance of what language design actually is, or a troubling disingenuity mea…

Creator of Scala believes, and advocates, Scala is simpler than Java? Wow.

So does creator of spring who sat on lightbends board for a while

Re: What's Next for Scala

#190
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't expect to actually take over Java on the domains it owns.

Why Java devs automatically assume that every new language is made to overthrow Java/C#? They might still to provide better development in a particular domain. Go or Python or JacaScript are good at rivaling Java at mainstream language, and so what?

Because that is what the "every new language" crowd keeps selling, without understanding how they got there.
Post reply on HN