From First Principles: Why Scala?

Post by valenterry » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

_a1_ wrote: post #59

valenterry wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's clarify some points for folks not so familiar with Scala. > * Scala minor version are binary incompatible, so maintaining Scala projects is a big pain. Upgrading Spark from Scala 2.11 to Scala 2.12 was a massive undertaking for example. Scala just chose a strange naming scheme. Other languages would have just increased their major version instead. The scala minor version is increased every few years and not eve…

> Scala just has implicits which can be used for method extension. I don't think it's fair to say it like this. Scala's implicits can mean different things, depending on where they're used. Scala 3 even divides 'implicit' to multiple keywords. (kind of 'static' in C++ I guess, only more complicated)

Post by thelittlenag » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #26

mwcampbell wrote: post #20

I dabbled with Scala several years ago, but I've been using Kotlin for a JVM-based project and am happy with it. My main reason for choosing Kotlin is smoother interop with the JVM world. For example: - Scala adds an Option type, whereas Kotlin adds nullability checking for existing object types. - Scala has its own convention for getters and setters, whereas Kotlin automatically turns JVM getters and setters into pr…

> Scala defines its own set of collection classes [...] One (arguably) negative consequence of this is that Scala's collections don't play nice with Hibernate and similar ORMs. Due to the way they work, both Scala and Hibernate wanted to "take over" your collections, and obviously they cannot do so at the same time. Of course, it's arguable whether this is a flaw with Scala or with Hibernate, but for the programmers…

Post by aynyc » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #38

aynyc wrote: post #15

Is Scala used outside of Spark and Akka? Spark is my company chosen analytic engine, Scala was/is the main language for majority of the production workload. In the last two years or so, more devs are writing PySpark and SparkSQL jobs than Scala.

def mirrors my experience too. Vast majority of spark jobs were easily ported to sql/dbt and the remaining ones are in pyspark. I used to use a lot of scala spark in backend data processing in 2016 but now its almost down to zero. scala is real big impediment to making data processing accessible to general public in your company. order of preference now at my company is, 1. sql 2. pyspark 3. java spark 4. scala spark…

Post by dboreham » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #43

dominotw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard to win technical arguments with Scala geniuses that like using complicated language features. I was on a team building good old crud apps using monads, monoids, categories, combinators, effects cats, seamless and bunch of other nonsense that i've now purged from my brain. You could've easily mistaken our team for a programming language research group at a university. This is literally the number one reason i w…

This is my biggest gripe with Scala as well. I'm sure it's a great language, but I've often seen it used to add complexity where none is necessary. It's abused to give developers a sense of accomplishment and intellectual superiority. In fact, in one project my former employer was involved in, one main reason they picked Scala was to, on the one hand, weed out the chaff from their existing team of .net developers (in…

Post by jshmrsn » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

valenterry wrote: post #61

_a1_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scala just has implicits which can be used for method extension. I don't think it's fair to say it like this. Scala's implicits can mean different things, depending on where they're used. Scala 3 even divides 'implicit' to multiple keywords. (kind of 'static' in C++ I guess, only more complicated)

That's exactly what I said, no? Scala has one feature (implicits) but it can be used ("mean") for different things. Essentially, you can mark definitions as implicit and you can mark parameters as implicit. Yes, Scala 3 uses different keywords to make it easier to understand which is what, but both is still just the concept of things being implicit. Think about it: one without the other is completely useless. If you…