61–70 of 394 posts
Kotlin is a fine middle ground. I would say that coroutines was a misstep (though that's a matter of taste), but otherwise their choices have been pragmatic, and their multiplatform efforts are impressive.
> I’m also having affectionate memories of JavaScript and Python I am afraid, things are equally messy in JavaScript and Python too. "X language isn't fun anymore" is exactly how I feel about X = JavaScript, X = Python, X = C++, X = Java and many other languages. There was a time when I found Python and Js to be very fun languages. But recently the ecosystem has been becoming a mess. Build breakages on dependency upg…
Kotlin is a fine middle ground. I would say that coroutines was a misstep (though that's a matter of taste), but otherwise their choices have been pragmatic, and their multiplatform efforts are impressive.
I think one more problem with Scala, apart from the lack of stability and having to solve the language's problems instead of your application ones, is one of local maxima. Most of the ecosystem uses monads. And the way most projects end up using monads is have "the one monad" that every function returns. ZIO is an example of that. Understandable, since the alternative is to have tons of different function colors. How…
> why not just choose a language where that semantic already is the core semicolon semantic of the language? The semicolon isn't semantic. A "semicolon" monad is essentially a single global context object. Most languages let anyone anywhere introduce a global context accessible from everywhere else. At least a monad lets you track it all.
The semicolon semantic is how operations separated by semicolons (or newlines) are evaluated and how they impact the general state the program is in. Which is also what a monad's flatMap does, in a configurable way.
I actually think Scala is in the best position it's ever been. There is a commitment to making the language simpler, easier and cleaner. On the backend, ZIO ( https://zio.dev ) is the best concurrency library on any platform. On the frontend you have really interesting Scala.js projects like Laminar ( https://laminar.dev ). The biggest issue really is the tooling. SBT is simply awful.
Across the board the language and environment is stabilizing. Most of the (correct) criticisms expressed in this article are either 1. An expression that dependency management remains really hard as dependencies and ecosystems grow 2. An artifact of the fact that early scala projects relied heavily on borrowing from java to bootstrap and it caused a snarl of dependencies. On the latter, I see a decline in snarl overtime.
It is fair to say that Rust and Go have a really awesome toolchain experience and are setting the standard (though I wonder if the problems of being "old" and having boatloads of libraries haven't yet set in). SBT nominally has a similar experience but it's definitely slower and somehow less intuitive. Hoping to see more work in this area and I think Mill + SBT "competing" + BSP and bloop opening the door for more innovation will allow for quick progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't tell you exactly why (though I have some ideas), but Lisps seem to settle into amazingly stable languages. Even Clojure, with all its initial trendiness, has been remarkably resistant to bloat and churn. Such things as it's added have largely been either standardisations of things that people were doing anyway, or very natural extensions of ideas that were already there, and it still generally passes the "…
Clojure has massive amounts of ecosystem and toolchain pain, even though it is a cool language. Most common dev environment for it is a complex emacs tool chain. If you are seeking the simple joys of programming, Clojure is unlikely to be what you want.
The ecosystem also has a huge emphasis on backwards compatibility and finishing libraries rather than the constant churn you see in other ecosystems. I can usually find a 5 year old Clojure library and include in my project without any problems at all, and when a major library want to try out an idea that changes the interface, they usually start a new library instead of forcing everyone to use the new interface they've come up with.
I'd say if you're seeking simplicity in terms of environment and programming, Clojure is definitely the way to go. And this is coming from someone who knew 0% Java coding before jumping into Clojure, and almost never touch/read any Java code when doing Clojure programming.
I wrote scala for six years and was on the team to first deploy akka in production. I've seen Json libraries come and go while also struggling to read files written with OO and FP patterns intermixed. Scala can be beautiful but in practice it gets messy. Switched to Go four years ago and I've never looked back. Go made programming fun again just like PHP did before either of them.
Still here having fun with PHP :) PHP 8.2 isn't Haskell but the type system is reliable and usable. There are a few gotchas here and there, almost always due to backwards compatibility, but nothing like earlier versions, and IMHO not more than other popular languages.
The big takeaway here for me is that Akka has changed license to BSL. It's almost crazy to me that such a fundamental and widely used project would switch to such a restrictive license. Some more details here: https://coralogix.com/blog/akka-license-change/ > Lightbend are operating on a “per core” model, with their base license starting at $1995 per core (defined as a thread or vCPU) > The license is only enforced i…
The big takeaway here for me is that Akka has changed license to BSL. It's almost crazy to me that such a fundamental and widely used project would switch to such a restrictive license. Some more details here: https://coralogix.com/blog/akka-license-change/ > Lightbend are operating on a “per core” model, with their base license starting at $1995 per core (defined as a thread or vCPU) > The license is only enforced i…
2.6.19 will be forked and a community-driven Akka will emerge eventually.
Forking a project is no easy feat. Certainly not one the size of Akka. You need a corporate backer who is going to put at least one person full time on it. I've seen plenty of forks start out with the best of intentions only to slowly fade in to nothing.
> I’m also having affectionate memories of JavaScript and Python I am afraid, things are equally messy in JavaScript and Python too. "X language isn't fun anymore" is exactly how I feel about X = JavaScript, X = Python, X = C++, X = Java and many other languages. There was a time when I found Python and Js to be very fun languages. But recently the ecosystem has been becoming a mess. Build breakages on dependency upg…
But even though a feature is removed from a next version of the language, old code still needs to work. A project must be able to contain vOld and vNext files.
Another thing I also miss is better interop between languages. Is C based interop really the best we can do?