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Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

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Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#21

Post by kev6168 »

TylerE wrote: post #19
harry8 wrote: post #16

Summarising the content: about 9:10 "virtual machines and garbage collection which when java first appeared were still ridiculous concepts" So I'm listening to a guy's thoughts on programming languages who apparently never heard of lisp and is seemingly unaware of Guy Steele. "Our time is much better spent using a high level language..." Which is a sweepingly generalisation for which the exceptions, nuances and cavea…

It's Bruce Eckel. He's selling whatever's flavor of the month. The guy switches languages more often than some people chance socks.

Really? I don't think he has been constantly chasing the hot thingy in the past 10 years, stuff like Ruby/Rails, Coffeescript, Clojure, Kotlin, Node, Typescript, F#, Go, Rust, Nim, Elixir, Meteor ...

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#22

Post by TylerE »

kev6168 wrote: post #21
TylerE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Bruce Eckel. He's selling whatever's flavor of the month. The guy switches languages more often than some people chance socks.

Really? I don't think he has been constantly chasing the hot thingy in the past 10 years, stuff like Ruby/Rails, Coffeescript, Clojure, Kotlin, Node, Typescript, F#, Go, Rust, Nim, Elixir, Meteor ...

He was C++, then Java, then he was C++ again then he was Python... Then he wrote about Flex, and now Scala...

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#23

Post by kev6168 »

TylerE wrote: post #22
kev6168 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I don't think he has been constantly chasing the hot thingy in the past 10 years, stuff like Ruby/Rails, Coffeescript, Clojure, Kotlin, Node, Typescript, F#, Go, Rust, Nim, Elixir, Meteor ...

He was C++, then Java, then he was C++ again then he was Python... Then he wrote about Flex, and now Scala...

I remember reading his blog [0] on Scala 4 years ago, it might be the flavor of the month at that time.

[0] http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=328540

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#24

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

harry8 wrote: post #20
brandonmenc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "virtual machines and garbage collection which when java first appeared were still ridiculous concepts" So I'm listening to a guy's thoughts on programming languages who apparently never heard of lisp and is seemingly unaware of Guy Steele. He clearly states that they were considered ridiculous because of their (perceived) performance - he didn't say people doubted their existence.

They weren't considered such by anyone with any expertise. If he has some he should have said "Falsely considered ..." Or people might think less of his own analysis. People might be wrong to think so due to poor communication on his part..?

Java was notoriously dog slow way into the early 2000s, when the JIT and Hotspot appeared. Before that, criticism about the JVM's performances were completely justified.

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#25

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

kev6168 wrote: post #21
TylerE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Bruce Eckel. He's selling whatever's flavor of the month. The guy switches languages more often than some people chance socks.

Really? I don't think he has been constantly chasing the hot thingy in the past 10 years, stuff like Ruby/Rails, Coffeescript, Clojure, Kotlin, Node, Typescript, F#, Go, Rust, Nim, Elixir, Meteor ...

His livelihood is about presenting at conferences and writing books. It's basically his job to dig up new technologies and fake excitement about them. Without that, he's out of a job.

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#26

Post by harry8 »

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #24
harry8 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't considered such by anyone with any expertise. If he has some he should have said "Falsely considered ..." Or people might think less of his own analysis. People might be wrong to think so due to poor communication on his part..?

Java was notoriously dog slow way into the early 2000s, when the JIT and Hotspot appeared. Before that, criticism about the JVM's performances were completely justified.

Java was not the first, he's touting Java as the first. It wasn't. while you're saying java wasn't even that, it was actually slow as. So we're really not disagreeing here.

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#27

Post by harry8 »

harry8 wrote: post #20
brandonmenc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "virtual machines and garbage collection which when java first appeared were still ridiculous concepts" So I'm listening to a guy's thoughts on programming languages who apparently never heard of lisp and is seemingly unaware of Guy Steele. He clearly states that they were considered ridiculous because of their (perceived) performance - he didn't say people doubted their existence.

They weren't considered such by anyone with any expertise. If he has some he should have said "Falsely considered ..." Or people might think less of his own analysis. People might be wrong to think so due to poor communication on his part..?

Anyone downvoting this might do better to explain why lisp garbage collection sucked and why so many people claimed it didn't before java was thought of. Downvoting rather than replying is lame. This is a respectful comment.

Note also I deliberately used direct quotes. If they are unfair please find something that isn't vague to demonstrate that.

Edit: Noting more downvotes received and no more replies. Is this language wars? Do you thin this is the scala community? The only reason I would have tried the video and posted here is due to an interest in scala and I've really tried to be fair in my responses. No matter, life is too short to waste more time on it.

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#28

Post by eranation »

eranation wrote: post #14
oimaz wrote: post #3

I'm disagree with his comparison of scala community to "league of legends". I've found the scala community, especially, the #scala IRC to be friendliest so far. Folks are always there to help you out irrespective of your level of proficiency with language or programming in general

I second that, I don't know where he went, but at least in reddit.com/r/scala people are very nice and helpful, and Martin Odersky visits there frequently and answers questions. I was in touch with several people in the community and from typesafe / EPFL and really don't know where the league of legends comparison comes from. In any case, I do suggest anyone who haven't seen or tried Scala to give it a shot. It's a f…

Sorry for the duplicate comment, I submitted after no-procast and apparently got it submitted twice (where did the delete / edit button go? :)

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#29

Post by brandonmenc »

harry8 wrote: post #26
zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java was notoriously dog slow way into the early 2000s, when the JIT and Hotspot appeared. Before that, criticism about the JVM's performances were completely justified.

Java was not the first, he's touting Java as the first. It wasn't. while you're saying java wasn't even that, it was actually slow as. So we're really not disagreeing here.

> Java was not the first, he's touting Java as the first.

He did not say this.

You are imagining it. Re-watch the video if you don't believe me.

You're getting tripped up by the fact that he's talking about popular languages, not languages in general. Java was the first time most of the people who only ever did their work in C and C++ encountered virtual machines and garbage collection.

Re: Bruce Eckel: Rethinking Scala

#30

Post by harry8 »

harry8 wrote: post #26
zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java was notoriously dog slow way into the early 2000s, when the JIT and Hotspot appeared. Before that, criticism about the JVM's performances were completely justified.

Java was not the first, he's touting Java as the first. It wasn't. while you're saying java wasn't even that, it was actually slow as. So we're really not disagreeing here.

From my comment that started this thread:

about 9:10 "virtual machines and garbage collection which when java first appeared were still ridiculous concepts"

Well absolutely, yeah, that's exactly what he did say. Word for word. In direct quotes. With a timestamp so you can go and listen to those exact words.

Spelling it out there were multiple implementations of Lisp with garbage collection that were described by many at the time and afterward as successful and efficient. Guy Steele was on the Java design committee. Yes. No really he was.

Previously, among other things he'd done this: http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html

Now if Mr Eckel just did a bad job in the first 10 minutes but improved and so I was hasty, ok, make that case - I specifically asked about that. If my direct quote is somehow wrong because of context and I missed it, please provide the quote in the wider context. But let's not make this a language wars style "Nyer nyer you're wrong because I said. C is a virus. Perl is line noise any perceived criticism of my favourite tech is evil" or whatever.

Choose life.

If tech is good make its case. This is someone watching something and responding on the front page of HN because they're interested seems like quite a weird reaction to me - others mentioned things about the "scala community" elsewhere in these comments. Maybe this is another example that helps someone's case?

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