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Scala isn't fun anymore

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Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#141

Post by klibertp »

hocuspocus wrote: post #43
keewee7 wrote: post #26

The commercial entity behind the Scala language didn't do enough to make it more usable for Android developers. It has been downhill ever since.

I really wonder why every time Scala is discussed on HN, someone wants to rewrite history about some mythical synergy with the Android ecosystem. This is so bizarre. In what world would Typesafe/Lightbend have found the money and resources to pull off even a fraction of what Jetbrains did with Kotlin? Let alone convince Google. On the other hand I'm very happy Scala isn't tied to the Android runtime.

> In what world would Typesafe/Lightbend have found the money and resources to pull off even a fraction of what Jetbrains did with Kotlin? Let alone convince Google.

What did Jetbrains do with Kotlin that required money and resources outside of Scala's community reach? (Also, what do you mean about convincing Google?)

I learned Scala a few years back and am working with Kotlin this year. I use Android Studio - I expected to be mind-blown with the IDE support. I wasn't. The only feature worth mentioning is the automatic conversion of pasted Java code to Kotlin, which is really trivial to implement if you have tools for working with AST of both languages and a bit of free time. Scala is handicapped here, last I checked, and only got better with version 3 rewrite, but if that's a killer feature for Kotlin, then replicating it for Scala by heaping regexes until they cover 95% of cases would also work.

I honestly don't see anything in Kotlin and the IDE that couldn't be implemented for Scala as a plugin, if there was interest in that.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#142

Post by nablaone »

practice9 wrote: post #25
petesergeant wrote: post #6

> the ecosystem is essentially a microcosm of the US political landscape what does this mean?

constant drama. Travis Brown (a very sociopathic and toxic, straight up unstable person) tried to cancel John A De Goes, total shitshow ensued. FYI, Travis has created scripts to auto-dox people on Twitter if he doesn't like them. Travis also left Scala ecosystem after lashing out at literally everybody including Martin Odersky Reason: De Goes invited a speaker to his LambdaConf conference, without knowing that speak…

Keep on posting. Me waiting for season 2.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#143

Post by eduction »

billfruit wrote: post #59
jwmcq wrote: post #36

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.

setup and emacs were quite simple for me - for emacs I just installed clojure-mode and cider via melpa like any other package. I think later I added paredit. All should include snippets for your emacs init file on their github project pages.

When you have a project source file open you can M-x `cider-jack-in` (or C-c C-x j j) to open a fresh repl right in emacs. I found this useful advice for after cider and clojure mode are installed (skip the “configuration” section) - https://www.braveclojure.com/basic-emacs/

Setup on the Clojure/filesystem/JVM side was just leiningen - install lein and then `lein new app foo` gives you a fresh project dir for `foo`. You should probably install lein before the emacs stuff as cider may need a working Clojure install, not sure.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#144

Post by weego »

threeseed wrote: post #7

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.

granted ZIO is excellent.

Scala.js is a dead end that almost no one should be investing in. Who can honestly say that the best possible dev path for them (product/business) is to need Scala devs to do their JS frontend? Even just the economics of the pay-gap in those two skillsets is untenable. We've been through this before any number of times in JAVA, give up it's an awful choice no one will thank you for.

I'm also frustrated by how we seem to have managed to not only recreate the Spring problem with FP libraries (communities online will tell people to first go with their personal FP lib of choice as a "must have" for starting a project) but make it worse by also having competing 'factions' who argue about which one is better.

We're apparently aiming to recreate all the same mistakes JAVA started making which was the launchpad for Scala and other JVM language variants in the first place.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#145

Post by mumblemumble »

badpun wrote: post #42
saberience wrote: post #2

I don't have a ton to say here, the article says it all really. But this also reflects my experience when developing with Scala and although I love the language and its brevity, I went back to Java because I hated the Scala toolchain, sbt, dependency issues, etc. Basically, I like the language in isolation but the overall experience was horrible.

Java has the same dependency issues? I vividly remember spending days on jars shading in Maven. Basically, a single approach that would solve this, irrespective of the language, would be isolating dependency trees of every library from each other, essentially duplicating the code of many common libraries in RAM (like Docker, but for libraries inside the same process). There's an option to do that in Maven, but it's n…

I have personally spent so much time fussing with runtime ClassDefNotFound and MethodNotFound errors in Java that I am no longer able to respond to assertions that Java is type-safe with anything but an incoherent stream of cursing and rage tears.

But Scala somehow seems to take all of that and intensify it. I have heard that Scala 3 is supposed to improve this, but I don't anticipate being able to adopt Scala 3 before the heat death of the universe.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#146

Post by dhosek »

rufius wrote: post #140

Scala the language is fine. Not my favorite - it’s a little conceptually big for my taste but that’s a preference thing. Scala the ecosystem was never fun though. I can’t decide if it’s worse than JavaScript (NPM upgrade hell sucks hard).

When I saw the whole having to include the compiler version in dependencies I lost interest in Scala fast. I’m using it now for work, and it’s—fine—but there does seem to be a lot of fragile magic involved with it.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#147

Post by kitd »

badpun wrote: post #42
saberience wrote: post #2

I don't have a ton to say here, the article says it all really. But this also reflects my experience when developing with Scala and although I love the language and its brevity, I went back to Java because I hated the Scala toolchain, sbt, dependency issues, etc. Basically, I like the language in isolation but the overall experience was horrible.

Java has the same dependency issues? I vividly remember spending days on jars shading in Maven. Basically, a single approach that would solve this, irrespective of the language, would be isolating dependency trees of every library from each other, essentially duplicating the code of many common libraries in RAM (like Docker, but for libraries inside the same process). There's an option to do that in Maven, but it's n…

JBang [1] can help a lot here, especially with the new "BOM POM" feature. The experience feels closer to Go than Maven.

[1] - https://www.jbang.dev/documentation/guide/latest/dependencie...

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#148

Post by stickfigure »

badpun wrote: post #42
saberience wrote: post #2

I don't have a ton to say here, the article says it all really. But this also reflects my experience when developing with Scala and although I love the language and its brevity, I went back to Java because I hated the Scala toolchain, sbt, dependency issues, etc. Basically, I like the language in isolation but the overall experience was horrible.

Java has the same dependency issues? I vividly remember spending days on jars shading in Maven. Basically, a single approach that would solve this, irrespective of the language, would be isolating dependency trees of every library from each other, essentially duplicating the code of many common libraries in RAM (like Docker, but for libraries inside the same process). There's an option to do that in Maven, but it's n…

I only very rarely see this in Java, even in huge monoliths. Not that there's a technical reason for this; I think there's a cultural expectation that you don't break backwards compatibility with Java libraries. Perhaps the Scala world is more cutting-edge and fluid so there are different cultural expectations.

The OP mentions Jackson. Jackson 1.x -> 2.x changed the package (so they are wholly separate libraries), Jackson 2.x -> 3.x will do it again. I've never had backwards compatibility issues with Jackson. I don't know what someone could be doing in jackson-module-scala that breaks with a minor version bump.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#150

Post by groby_b »

misja111 wrote: post #79

> We’re left with the Scala FP communities, which yield awesome libraries and are awesome people, but the ecosystem is essentially a microcosm of the US political landscape. This sentence puzzles me. Does anybody know what the author could have meant with it? As a European Scala FP programmer, I have no idea.

If you click on the "Politics" tag (which the author has attached to the article...), you'll quickly learn why.

They are a fan of free speech == unrestricted speech. Most larger ecosystems these days have a code of conduct, restricting some forms of expression if they are deemed detrimental to the community. Something that very much riles advocates of unrestricted speech. Often, having a code of conduct is conflated with social justice activism - a movement that is prominently lamented in US politics more so than Europe.

Note: I'm not interested in debating which side is right here, or if that conflating of positions makes sense. Just pointing out the likely origin of the "microcosm" comment.

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