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Scala isn't fun anymore

alexn.org

361–370 of 394 posts

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#361

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…

Imo this kind of license is a huge PITA with containerized workloads that autoscale, etc. Would one pay based on average core usage or peak usage?

As much as people like to rant about license managers used in proprietary software (and hardware from IBM...), that's a necessary feature for handling that kind of license well.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming languages will converge after(!) natural languages have converged. Not gonna happen in our lifetime! > I am sure the concept of number will outlive the concept of monad in terms of popularity. It already does. I don't get your point...

> Programming languages will converge after(!) natural languages have converged. Interesting point. But I think you emphasise too much the surface syntax of the language. The language will be a new form of mathematics, and it will be universal, with adapters to various natural languages, of course.

That's beyond me. I guess I prefer to look at what can happen during my life-span. :)

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming languages will converge after(!) natural languages have converged. Interesting point. But I think you emphasise too much the surface syntax of the language. The language will be a new form of mathematics, and it will be universal, with adapters to various natural languages, of course.

That's beyond me. I guess I prefer to look at what can happen during my life-span. :)

Oh, I am working on that universal language right now. Shouldn't take more than 15 more years or so.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#364
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are still in the phase where concepts are settling. Pretty sure nobody in a 100 years will think that Monads are a good idea.

> We are still in the phase where concepts are settling. Yes of course concepts are still settling, and they always will be. > Pretty sure nobody in a 100 years will think that Monads are a good idea. Why? I for one am pretty sure monads will be a useful concept a hundred years from now. What about functors, will that concept also be obsolete?

Listen, Monads are fine, Functors are fine, use them wherever and whenever you like. The problem I have with them is that they are making things explicit that are intuitively clear (Monads more than Functors). That is useful in some situations, but in most situations it is not, and just uses up precious brain capacity. If you go to the shop, you are not expecting someone at the entrance telling you that you have to pay for what you buy, and before paying, you are not telling the cashier that you are going to pay them now. You just do it.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the cliff notes of the right way / where's the signal in noise? I don't write Python, but Python is like Java these days, it finds you.

In short, a huge number of packaging problems come not from packaging, but from the way you install, configure and call python. Unfortunatly, everybody and their mother tell you how to do this, and you'll find 1000 articles to get you in trouble, but very few to tell you what you should actually do. The full story is pretty long and most people don't have the time and resources to learn everything about it. The easie…

My impression is Python packaging is stuck in a local maximum, and that any attempt to move out of it will be as disruptive as 2->3. Dropping support for conda et al will only split the ecosystem, hasten the rise of Julia, and make Python packaging more acrimonious. I like your simplified approach (and take a similar approach where I can), but much of the value of Python comes from its ability to be inserted without too much fuss (assuming you'd build things from source) into an existing system. I'd suggest while wheels were a good idea at the time, they've become a parallel ecosystem and source of division.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#366
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the problem you mention for Loom applies equally to OS threads? What's the difference? Loom just lets you create more threads but with OS threads you are doing IO too.

This is independent of OS threads or green threads. The problem is that with Loom the developer loses control whether they can execute something on one OS thread only or not. Whereas right now they conciously have to decide if they want to run something sync or async.

Nothing is stopping the developer from starting a single thread executor and using that to launch many virtual threads. Is that what you meant?

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#367
post #301
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, are you going to give reason or is it more of a Thought leader style pronouncement?

It does look awfully like the async/await mess languages with bad concurrency adopted as a crutch for not having good concurrency. Erlang/Golang model of superlight "threads" exchanging messages appears to be much better at both being actually concurrent and making most code look decent and easy to see what is actually happening.

> model of superlight "threads" exchanging messages

That's exactly what Loom is.

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#368
post #173

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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 befo…

That wasn't my experience with Java back in the day. What the article describes with Scala rings true, and I stopped using it (due to a job change) more than 2 years ago! So Scala was already going down this route 2 years ago.

> That wasn't my experience with Java back in the day

It is still not a typical experience. In our team, we try _very_ hard to avoid reflection and these errors are very very rare (never in Production).

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking virtual threads here(project loom), i think, no? https://openjdk.org/jeps/428 Basically, you don't have a thread context anymore, or you don't have a use for it anymore

> We are talking virtual threads here(project loom), i think, no? No. Currently, when I have code (not using futures or anything) and in the middle there is a Thread.sleep() then I know that this thread will be blocked until the sleep is over (or interrupted) and _no other code is being executed on this thread_. So the question is: will this behaviour change? Because if it does, then Loom breaks existing code. And th…

ah ok i see your single thread is blocked nevermind

Re: Scala isn't fun anymore

#370

> Maybe this is just me getting older (going to turn 40 soon). Maybe all programming is terrible. I’ve actually started to read Java newsletters, maybe Spring isn’t that bad, I’m also having affectionate memories of JavaScript and Python, and thinking about having a plan B in case this programming thing doesn’t work out The older I get the more this rings true. I've had several false starts with fancy new languages a…

Core Java was never that bad .... It was J2EE and the everything including the kitchensink frameworks that were a blight on the java world.
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