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Barriers to scala adoption

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Re: Barriers to scala adoption

#11

Post by jjm »

blackiron wrote: post #6

The problem with scala and other non mainstream but powerful languages is that they are just ugly; no amount of marketing and feature lists will make them attractive because aesthethics are hard wired into our brains; at a low level ugly equals misery and pain, at a higher level its just an indicator of maintenance problems. Perl got away with it because at the time because there were not many options for scripting,…

I can understand your viewpoint however I don't consider Scala ugly. How about some more explanation if you can.

Re: Barriers to scala adoption

#13

Post by gtani »

mosburger wrote: post #7

> Another language I don't see mentioned above is Fantom. Some say that already is a simpler language that offers improvements over Java without the overwhelming power of Scala, but it hasn't been widely adopted. There are many theories for this, my own is that it maybe doesn't offer enough new stuff for someone to make the effort to switch. Scala clearly does add a lot of value, so that should be a lesson for newcom…

It's kind of like nemerle, a ML-inspired language with lisp-type macros for .NET, very cool but you don't hear anything about it.

Basically, for JVM environment you have a lot of noisy judgments around language uptake: the big 4 (scala, JRuby, groovy, clojure) and the little 3 (Ceylon, kotlin, gosu).

Re: Barriers to scala adoption

#14

Post by tsotha »

martincmartin wrote: post #4
virmundi wrote: post #3

I like Scala, though I just dabble in it. But I have a few thoughts on why it will be difficult for it to be mainstream. One of its greatest features require a meaningful rethink of the JEE stack. Actors passing messages seems to not really work in a one thread to one request world where you should fork new threads. There are too many ways to do the same thing in it. Manipulating maps or list can be done with various…

Actors ... seems to not really work in a [JEE setup]. Then don't use Actors, you can still use the rest of the language and you're still a lot better off than Java. There are too many ways to do the same thing in it. ... This becomes the Java version of Perl. Problems that only manifest once you have a large code base aren't barriers to adoption. Mainstream languages would be a lot better if they were! After all, Per…

>Problems that only manifest once you have a large code base aren't barriers to adoption.

Ye Gods. Of course it is. If your code base is small you can pretty much get away with using anything. It's only when the code base is large enough to make maintenance challenging that differences between code paradigms start to matter.

If scala is only good for the sorts of projects PERL can handle, why would I stop using PERL?

Re: Barriers to scala adoption

#15

Post by gclaramunt »

tsotha wrote: post #14
martincmartin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actors ... seems to not really work in a [JEE setup]. Then don't use Actors, you can still use the rest of the language and you're still a lot better off than Java. There are too many ways to do the same thing in it. ... This becomes the Java version of Perl. Problems that only manifest once you have a large code base aren't barriers to adoption. Mainstream languages would be a lot better if they were! After all, Per…

>Problems that only manifest once you have a large code base aren't barriers to adoption. Ye Gods. Of course it is. If your code base is small you can pretty much get away with using anything . It's only when the code base is large enough to make maintenance challenging that differences between code paradigms start to matter. If scala is only good for the sorts of projects PERL can handle, why would I stop using PERL…

In my view, Scala is good for projects where using Java is too complicated and you can use better abstractions.

I would argue that Scala helps to keep your code base smaller and easier to manipulate (due to extra type safety). In any language, a big codebase needs coding standards and the project develops it's own "culture". You have the same multiple approaches problem in Java: how do you search for items in a collection?

Re: Barriers to scala adoption

#16

Post by tsotha »

gclaramunt wrote: post #15
tsotha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Problems that only manifest once you have a large code base aren't barriers to adoption. Ye Gods. Of course it is. If your code base is small you can pretty much get away with using anything . It's only when the code base is large enough to make maintenance challenging that differences between code paradigms start to matter. If scala is only good for the sorts of projects PERL can handle, why would I stop using PERL…

In my view, Scala is good for projects where using Java is too complicated and you can use better abstractions. I would argue that Scala helps to keep your code base smaller and easier to manipulate (due to extra type safety). In any language, a big codebase needs coding standards and the project develops it's own "culture". You have the same multiple approaches problem in Java: how do you search for items in a colle…

>In my view, Scala is good for projects where using Java is too complicated and you can use better abstractions.

I have yet to run into a project for which the use of Java is too complicated, and I'm concerned the designers of Scala have made a few mistakes of the kind you see in C++, like operator overloading.

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