Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler • Hacker News Board

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#31

Post by zak_mc_kracken » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 2:03 AM UTC

vfclists wrote: post #15

It appears to be a fork of the compiler not the language itself. I don't know much about Scala but I believe that most of its facilities are in the libraries rather than the language itself. Since he seems to know more about compiling Scala than everyone else I guess it must be a good thing. Lets hope others get to fill the inevitable gaps.

> It appears to be a fork of the compiler not the language itself.

They are the same thing. There is no spec for Scala (no recent one anyway) so the specification is the Scala compiler. And based on everything that Paul has been saying these past months, the compiler is very close to being unmaintainable.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#32

Post by saosebastiao » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 2:20 AM UTC

Can anyone more familiar with the matter tell me what is wrong with the parallel collections? Does he plan to reimplement them in a more maintainable way? Or do away with them altogether?

All the talk about scala makes me wonder what the language would have looked like if Java compatibility was never a goal. I'm no language designer and I'm probably wrong but some things that come to mind are 1) no nulls, 2) no distinction between classes and their companion objects, 3) no distinction between traits and abstract classes.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#33

Post by nine_k » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 2:41 AM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #13

Shouldn't this be called Standard Scala? Too soon?

Will eventually become Common Sca.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#34

Post by zak_mc_kracken » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 2:46 AM UTC

frowaway001 wrote: post #24

taeric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thread doesn't exactly inspire confidence in choosing Scala as a platform, to be honest. With quotes such as "There's still plenty of very basic stuff in the compiler which doesn't work," I'm honestly not sure how anyone could look forward to a dive. Don't get me wrong. I know that it isn't necessarily the case that "basic" represents "affects plenty of people." But, especially when it was used in a "hits more p…

The thing is that it's much worse everywhere else, the Scala devs just work with it in a more transparent way.

Your ability of denial is quite impressive but looking at your posting history, it's actually not surprising at all. You seem to have quite a thing about Scala and hating pretty much anything that's not it.

Java is at least as transparent as Scala in that respect: every single feature that was shipped as part of Java 8 has been discussed and decided openly on mailing-lists. Everyone knew exactly what was going to be in Java 8 (including what was not going to be shipped) which is a far cry from Scala's operating mode of adding features to the language and then retroactively creating SIPs to give them an air of legitimacy.

I'm siding squarely with Paul Phillips there: I don't have a lot of faith in Typesafe to carry Scala forward any more.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#35

Post by cpeterso » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 3:23 AM UTC

Is the name "Policy" a pun on "Paul SC" (Paul's Scala Compiler)? Or is there another meaning?

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#36

Post by bkirwi » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #32

Can anyone more familiar with the matter tell me what is wrong with the parallel collections? Does he plan to reimplement them in a more maintainable way? Or do away with them altogether? All the talk about scala makes me wonder what the language would have looked like if Java compatibility was never a goal. I'm no language designer and I'm probably wrong but some things that come to mind are 1) no nulls, 2) no disti…

For a short answer to the first question, see his slides on the collection library[0], particularly number 42. The gist is that the Scala collections have too many dimensions (mutable/immutable, sequential/parallel, strict/lazy), all of which share code -- but it turns out that the right implementation for a lazy immutable parallel collection is not necessarily good for a strict mutable sequential collection, and juggling all these variations makes it much trickier to modify or reason about the code. He seems to be fine with the existence of parallel collections, but probably as something that lives on top of the standard library instead of being layered into it.

To your second paragraph -- I believe that #2 might have found its way into a Scala-from-scratch, but the others certainly wouldn't. I think the big difference would be in the type system, which could be much simpler if it didn't have to interop with Java's weird generics.

[0] http://www.slideshare.net/extempore/a-scala-corrections-libr...

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #32

Can anyone more familiar with the matter tell me what is wrong with the parallel collections? Does he plan to reimplement them in a more maintainable way? Or do away with them altogether? All the talk about scala makes me wonder what the language would have looked like if Java compatibility was never a goal. I'm no language designer and I'm probably wrong but some things that come to mind are 1) no nulls, 2) no disti…

[deleted]

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#38

Post by jpgvm » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

cakoose wrote: post #3

nemothekid wrote: post #2

Can someone with some familiarity with Scala community explain why someone who seems to be the largest contributor to Scala felt the need to create a fork? It seems completely justified due to his credentials, but he doesn't give any specific reasons why he created this fork.

Paul Phillips' 2013 rant/talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS1lpKBMkgg

After watching this talk I don't care what he comes up with in the future, I want to use it.

Excellent talk.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#39

Post by bkirwi » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 3:41 AM UTC

ENGNR wrote: post #17

Wait.. is it called policy? That's going to be a nightmare to Google Almost as bad as 'play' (which has largely fallen back to 'playframework')

Judging from the readme, it seems that unGoogleability might be a feature.

Re: Policy – A fork of the Scala compiler

#40

Post by taeric » Sat, Sep 06, 2014, 4:01 AM UTC

frowaway001 wrote: post #24

taeric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thread doesn't exactly inspire confidence in choosing Scala as a platform, to be honest. With quotes such as "There's still plenty of very basic stuff in the compiler which doesn't work," I'm honestly not sure how anyone could look forward to a dive. Don't get me wrong. I know that it isn't necessarily the case that "basic" represents "affects plenty of people." But, especially when it was used in a "hits more p…

The thing is that it's much worse everywhere else, the Scala devs just work with it in a more transparent way.

What is worse? I mean, I can understand complaining about speed of feature uptake. But... stability seems pretty good pretty much everywhere else.

That is, my complaint here is that the platform is unstable. Thus making it scary to adopt. How is that "worse" everywhere else?