Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today • Hacker News Board

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#31

Post by ebiester » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #25

Curious about something - if you had to do a new project from scratch today on top of the JVM, which language would you choose: clojure, scala, jruby (or anything else). I ask because my brain really cant absorb too many languages, and I want to make some kind of pseudo-optimal choice. I'm not just talking about some shootout here, but about the the next 5 years outlook.

We moved node.js to Scala and play for our startup. I've programmed in grails (groovy) professionally and don't recommend it. I've heard good this about clojure but you either are a lisp fan or you aren't. As such, I don't think closure is the next big thing.

I am not a fan of the required cognitive overhead that scala takes to get started -- reading someone else's code reminds me a lot of C++ and the tooling still needs to catch up. If any of the JVM languages are going to break out, I'd put my money on scala. JRuby has its place as well, and I know of a few high profile projects done in it, so it wouldn't be a bad choice for consumer apps. For enterprise, I think static typing has some major wins.

I kind of want Scala--, to be honest...

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#32

Post by jerry2yu » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:48 PM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #23

bad_user wrote: post #12

Some of the Coursera courses rock. In March I also attended the NLP course. Another course on compilers from Stanford is coming up.

The NLP course needs some improvement in particular the Chris Manning sections. It was allow over the internal discussion forums. Dan Jurafsky was very good, can't say the same about Chris Manning.

Agree! It would be great if more examples are provided in Prof. Manning's lectures.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#33

Post by wonderzombie » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 8:03 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #28

signa11 wrote: post #26

I am kind of discouraged by following post by Guido on scala : http://neopythonic.blogspot.in/2008/11/scala.html?m=1 . but perhaps this course would be sufficiently generic to not get bogged down by scala's peculiarities...

That was interesting, thank you for linking to it. At first he seemed to be reacting more to Odersky's book than to the language. I wonder if he had first opened "Scala For The Impatient" how his reaction would be different. Then he takes the odd tack of complaining about arcana in the Scala typesystem, and then suggests Haskell as a solution. I get the impression that his love of dynamic typing had his mind made up…

What does Haskell have to do with dynamic typing? It's about as statically typed as they come. He's saying that if we really want a static typing system, maybe Haskell's flexible and powerful type system is the right approach.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#34

Post by pohl » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 8:20 PM UTC

wonderzombie wrote: post #33

pohl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was interesting, thank you for linking to it. At first he seemed to be reacting more to Odersky's book than to the language. I wonder if he had first opened "Scala For The Impatient" how his reaction would be different. Then he takes the odd tack of complaining about arcana in the Scala typesystem, and then suggests Haskell as a solution. I get the impression that his love of dynamic typing had his mind made up…

What does Haskell have to do with dynamic typing? It's about as statically typed as they come. He's saying that if we really want a static typing system, maybe Haskell's flexible and powerful type system is the right approach.

It doesn't have anything to do with it. I probably phrased it badly because I was responding to two different paragraphs where Guido was talking about different things. You would be better served following the link to what he wrote and reading that directly.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#35

Post by wonderzombie » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 8:25 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #34

wonderzombie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Haskell have to do with dynamic typing? It's about as statically typed as they come. He's saying that if we really want a static typing system, maybe Haskell's flexible and powerful type system is the right approach.

It doesn't have anything to do with it. I probably phrased it badly because I was responding to two different paragraphs where Guido was talking about different things. You would be better served following the link to what he wrote and reading that directly.

I did read it, actually. :) That is why I was puzzled; he suggests Haskell as an alternative, and I thought that was a classy response, all things considered.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#36

Post by qwertyz » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 8:43 PM UTC

modersky wrote: post #30

qwertyz wrote: post #29

It's a shame the videos don't have subtitles like in the crypto course.

Subtitles are being produced. They should be up in a day or two.

Oh, good to know. As non native english speaker they are of great help.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#37

Post by nradov » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #24

The "Scala Worksheet" feature of the Scala IDE plugin sounds pretty nice. Apparently it's a multi-line REPL, where changes automatically get compiled & evaluated upon save. I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get it installed in my Eclipse, though. I already had an older version of Scala IDE installed, and apparently this is a fairly new feature. I tried the latest milestone, which is supposed to have it, but…

Unfortunately the Scala IDE doesn't yet work with Eclipse Juno. Eclipse made a breaking API change. It's a shame they can't provide better backward compatibility; every new Eclipse release seems to break a lot of plugins. https://github.com/scala-ide/scala-ide/pull/145

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#38

Post by eranation » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:37 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #37

pohl wrote: post #24

The "Scala Worksheet" feature of the Scala IDE plugin sounds pretty nice. Apparently it's a multi-line REPL, where changes automatically get compiled & evaluated upon save. I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get it installed in my Eclipse, though. I already had an older version of Scala IDE installed, and apparently this is a fairly new feature. I tried the latest milestone, which is supposed to have it, but…

Unfortunately the Scala IDE doesn't yet work with Eclipse Juno. Eclipse made a breaking API change. It's a shame they can't provide better backward compatibility; every new Eclipse release seems to break a lot of plugins. https://github.com/scala-ide/scala-ide/pull/145

I managed to install on Juno. I tried the following and all worked: http://download.scala-ide.org/ecosystem/dev-milestone-2.9/si... (includes both IDE and the worksheet, which I wouldn't give up on)

Also the specific Juno one: http://download.scala-ide.org/releases-juno-29/milestone/sit...

but it doesn't have the worksheet feature

both worked for me on the latest Juno release

p.s. I did have some issues, and uninstalling and reinstalling did the trick

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#39

Post by eranation » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:39 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #25

Curious about something - if you had to do a new project from scratch today on top of the JVM, which language would you choose: clojure, scala, jruby (or anything else). I ask because my brain really cant absorb too many languages, and I want to make some kind of pseudo-optimal choice. I'm not just talking about some shootout here, but about the the next 5 years outlook.

I will choose Play and Scala. Although JRuby/Rails comes as a very, very close second option (simply because all the cool things have a gem, not many have a Play module) But I want to have some sort of static typing to protect me, and as a Java developer, it's where I feel a bit more at home. Clojure is what I'd LIKE to use (with Noir) but I don't have the guts to be honest.

If Play had all the community and gems that RoR has, it would be a very, very strong framework, and something that the enterprise world would (years from now) adopt more likely than RoR (for all the wrong reasons, but such is life)

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala starts today

#40

Post by eranation » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #31

sandGorgon wrote: post #25

Curious about something - if you had to do a new project from scratch today on top of the JVM, which language would you choose: clojure, scala, jruby (or anything else). I ask because my brain really cant absorb too many languages, and I want to make some kind of pseudo-optimal choice. I'm not just talking about some shootout here, but about the the next 5 years outlook.

We moved node.js to Scala and play for our startup. I've programmed in grails (groovy) professionally and don't recommend it. I've heard good this about clojure but you either are a lisp fan or you aren't. As such, I don't think closure is the next big thing. I am not a fan of the required cognitive overhead that scala takes to get started -- reading someone else's code reminds me a lot of C++ and the tooling still n…

I want it to be Scala so much as well, I don't want to start learning Go. (Although I heard great things about it, just after learning Scala, I don't want to learn a new language for a few years now)