Gut feeling and first-second impression: Meh...
I felt somehow connected to the Typesafe name. It felt tech-y, dev-y, but this one is somehow... non-charismatic.
Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#12Goodnite, sweet prince. On one side, I support Odersky's decision to focus on Scala's simple and modular next version, Dotty (the present one became a Flying Spaghetti Monster, without the flying part). But as for now, Scala is effectively dead.
"Dotty is a platform to try out new language concepts and compiler technologies for Scala." [0] Why should Scala be dead for now? I agree its a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but so is C++. [0] https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty
As a huge Scala fan, I fear that Dotty will suck the oxygen away. In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language.
I would urge typesa^H^Hlightbend to bring forward the introduction of vital syntactic features from dotty (e.g. existentials as HKTs, if they really think that's the best way to express type lambdas). Even if that involves making large changes to scalac that will have to be thrown away, the Scala community cannot survive with the syntax the way it is for much longer.
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#13Actually not a bad name, and it sounds more "do good" rather than mostly "prevent bad" as TypeSafe did.
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Dotty is a platform to try out new language concepts and compiler technologies for Scala." [0] Why should Scala be dead for now? I agree its a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but so is C++. [0] https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty
As a huge Scala fan, I fear that Dotty will suck the oxygen away. In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language. I would urge typesa^H^Hlightbend to bring forward the introduction of vital syntactic features from dotty (e.g. existentials as HKTs, if they really think that's the best way to express type lambdas). Even if that involves making…
>In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language.
Because Scala doesn't have enough syntax already?
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#15Gut feeling and first-second impression: Meh... I felt somehow connected to the Typesafe name. It felt tech-y, dev-y, but this one is somehow... non-charismatic.
Yes, this sounds more like a optics company.
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a huge Scala fan, I fear that Dotty will suck the oxygen away. In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language. I would urge typesa^H^Hlightbend to bring forward the introduction of vital syntactic features from dotty (e.g. existentials as HKTs, if they really think that's the best way to express type lambdas). Even if that involves making…
> In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language. Because Scala doesn't have enough syntax already?
Honestly no. A lot of the complex Scala you see is because Scala doesn't have syntax for something and so you have to put it together out of other things. Type lambdas and Miles Sabin's unboxed union types trick are prime examples of cases where adding some syntax would make a lot of real-world Scala a lot more readable. Likewise ADT case classes where you don't really want the class to be its own type - a little syntax would save a lot of repetitive "smart constructors".
Also there are cases where it's not more syntax that's needed, but different syntax. E.g. the way irrefutable unpacks in for/yields desugar to a (with)filter call is just dumb.
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#17The problem is threefold.
Firstly, as the letter notes, the majority of people using TypeSafe/LightBend's services are in fact "traditional" Java shops. This suggests that - in the enterprise at least - there's limited Scala penetration.
Secondly, the move to a more generic name (LightBend) is one more step away from their core competency. The name TypeSafe was chosen to highlight a particular aspect of the platform they felt was important. Although they likely still do, their customers don't appear to appreciate it (or at least in the same way it was meant, as an advert for Scala).
Finally the bifurcation of technical resources between ongoing Scala development and Dotty as a research project are likely to come up short in both regards. We are on the cusp of Java 9 being released within the year and Scala's big backwards incompatible step forwards with Java 8 still hasn't happened.
At the least you'd have to be a gambling person with a penchant for long odds to continue with Scala at this point.
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#18The problem is threefold. Firstly, as the letter notes, the majority of people using TypeSafe/LightBend's services are in fact "traditional" Java shops. This suggests that - in the enterprise at least - there's limited Scala penetration. Secondly, the move to a more generic name (LightBend) is one more step away from their core competency. The name TypeSafe was chosen to highlight a particular aspect of the platform…
> At the least you'd have to be a gambling person with a penchant for long odds to continue with Scala at this point.
I attended a (non-scala) meetup recently and got talking to a guy who does consulting in the Scala world. He'd been to a major conference in the past few weeks and reported that the vibe there was exceedingly bleak, with lots of negativity over the future of the Scala project.
One data point, but still...
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#19Goodnite, sweet prince. On one side, I support Odersky's decision to focus on Scala's simple and modular next version, Dotty (the present one became a Flying Spaghetti Monster, without the flying part). But as for now, Scala is effectively dead.
"Dotty is a platform to try out new language concepts and compiler technologies for Scala." [0] Why should Scala be dead for now? I agree its a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but so is C++. [0] https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty
The liveness metric in tech world is simple: is the number of users / new projects currently increasing (then it's alive) or decreasing (then it's dead)?
Re: Typesafe Changes Name to Lightbend
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Dotty is a platform to try out new language concepts and compiler technologies for Scala." [0] Why should Scala be dead for now? I agree its a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but so is C++. [0] https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty
As a huge Scala fan, I fear that Dotty will suck the oxygen away. In particular, freezing the syntax for as long as the proposed timeframe for Dotty to be delivered would kill any language. I would urge typesa^H^Hlightbend to bring forward the introduction of vital syntactic features from dotty (e.g. existentials as HKTs, if they really think that's the best way to express type lambdas). Even if that involves making…
Of all the things holding Scala back, frozen syntax is the least of its worries.
My two biggest day-to-day peeves are:
1) The poor quality of the entire tool chain
2) Immature libraries and ecosystem
Libraries and ecosystem: many opensource Scala libraries feel more like experiments in language wrangling or narrow (exposing only a tiny subset of the underlying features) wrappers for existing Java libraries than well-tested code. Documentation? Almost always spotty. Library community? Spotty. Source? Good luck reading it. Depending on the author's bent it can range from vaguely understandable to downright inscrutable. (On this last point: I've often poked around various Java/Python/Go/C libraries and been able to figure out fairly quickly what's going on. Much less so with Scala.)
Besides those two points - Scala is complex. To a newcomer the language is unfriendly and has a lot of rough edges. You have to build a lot of context to interpret existing Scala code - and much of this context is incidental to the problem at hand. This makes it very tough to incrementally learn about Scala features/syntax and slowly explore an existing Scala code base (especially an opensource one, where authors are more likely flexing their advanced Scala knowledge). And all that syntactic sugar? Terse. Elegant. Unintelligible to a newcomer.
Sorry. /rant over.