Scala – The Simple Parts
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Scala – The Simple Parts
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Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#2From most of the people I talk to, they rarely complain that scala sold out to industry, but instead talk about how complex the language is.
For truly widespread adoption, I'm talking PHP or Java levels, you need to have a totally different mindset. I don't think Scala is that language.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#3From most of the people I talk to, they rarely complain that scala sold out to industry, but instead talk about how complex the language is. For truly widespread adoption, I'm talking PHP or Java levels, you need to have a totally different mindset. I don't think Scala is that language.
I think achieving PHP or Java levels of adoption is as much about timing and serendipity as it does language features.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#4From most of the people I talk to, they rarely complain that scala sold out to industry, but instead talk about how complex the language is. For truly widespread adoption, I'm talking PHP or Java levels, you need to have a totally different mindset. I don't think Scala is that language.
I think achieving PHP or Java levels of adoption is as much about timing and serendipity as it does language features.
One is a prerequisite of the other though. That much is undeniable.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think achieving PHP or Java levels of adoption is as much about timing and serendipity as it does language features.
One is a prerequisite of the other though. That much is undeniable.
I don't think that's true at all. There are plenty of "bad" languages that have become popular.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#6The presentation is much better in person.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#7A word of advice: if you move from the .NET platform - C# - to the JVM, then Scala is your language. Java was your language for a very long time, and Java 8 is pretty close, but I still believe Scala is the right choice.
There is a ton of complexity in the type system but you don't need to learn it all at once. If you approach Scala development like you approach C# development you'll go far.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#8From most of the people I talk to, they rarely complain that scala sold out to industry, but instead talk about how complex the language is. For truly widespread adoption, I'm talking PHP or Java levels, you need to have a totally different mindset. I don't think Scala is that language.
I think achieving PHP or Java levels of adoption is as much about timing and serendipity as it does language features.
Java(blue collar language http://dfjug.org/thefeelofjava.pdf) is easy. Scala is not(http://blog.goodstuff.im/yes-virginia-scala-is-hard). (I am a Scala fan.)
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#9From most of the people I talk to, they rarely complain that scala sold out to industry, but instead talk about how complex the language is. For truly widespread adoption, I'm talking PHP or Java levels, you need to have a totally different mindset. I don't think Scala is that language.
There is a lot to love about Scala, but one of the hurdles is/was the compile time. I used Scala and I didn't love the tooling around it. Even installing and running scalatra, I felt like it was maven installing THE WORLD, just to build a very small thing. Then, once I got it going to have a very simple change, save, refresh to see changes loop in my web workflow was like 3-10 sec. Not huge, but I'm used to PHP or Ruby dev with instant refresh cycles. Then on the TDD side, it would take upwards of 10 seconds to noticed that files had changed to run my test suite in SBT. Again, I'm used to I'm not sure if that's Scala's fault or Scalatra or SBT, but no matter how I sliced it, as of 9 months ago or so, Scala didn't feel amazing to develop code in. Everything felt a bit clunky. The code itself I loved, but the way I got there felt worse.
Surprisingly when I tried Go, it was a much better developer experience in terms of the near instant compile, refresh, see change loop and also running tests was nearly instant. The "instant" feeling I get in PHP and Ruby was there, but in a compiled language. However, in Go, I don't have some of the functional and immutable concepts that I have in Scala, which sort of sucks.
At the end of the day I'm making tradeoffs somewhere and it doesn't feel awesome anywhere. I might check out Facebook's Hack simply because it offers type checking, performance, and fast refresh. Also maybe the latest .NET stuff announced with continuous compile might bridge the gap for C#. I really don't know.
I have yet to find the language that really feels amazing as a developer in sort of all areas. Every language seems to have baked in tradeoffs.
Re: Scala – The Simple Parts
#10Scala is great no matter what is the "true" answer to the question "is Scala too complex?".
If it's indeed too complex for the mass average developers, then I can use it to filter them out. I got a free way to hire better developers (I don't have to use Scala in production in order to use it in interviews...) Also if you do find a top developer who managed to master Scala's complexity, then the complexity is no longer a problem, it becomes a benefit, and they use it to create better libraries and APIs for the "regular" developers to use with more ease and type safety.
If it's not complex then I can easily hire any decent Java developer and provide Scala training (I think there is no argument that it's more productive / expressive than Java*, and remember in this "scenario" Scala is not more complex to learn than Java)
Win win
Now the real issue is compile times. If anything itches me toward trying Kotlin is having way too many coffee breaks (http://xkcd.com/303/)