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Scala – The Simple Parts

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Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#11

Post by camus2 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #3
ryanobjc wrote: post #2

From 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.

A majority of PHP users are not devs and just know enough to upload files on a server or tweak Wordpress.There is not that much serious PHP "engineers".

Anyway,it's great Scala choosed the JVM because it can be part of the stack of any business that already relies on it.That's what matters IHMO.If it is not fit,one can still switch back to java and still use the jar developped in scala or exploit java libs.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#12

Post by SkyMarshal »

Scala was the first ML family language I learned. I tried to love it, but found I needed help learning it, so I turned to Haskell hoping for a better understanding of some of Scala's type system and other ML concepts. Then I fell in love with Haskell.

Equally complex, if not moreso, and not any easier, but it felt simpler since it focused on a single paradigm instead of attempting to mix two big ones, and the whitespace-enforced readability and uniformity helped reduce cognitive load while learning and working with it. Great performance too, C-like in some cases with expert optimizations, and a range of concurrency and parallelization options.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#13

Post by ryanobjc »

ssmoot wrote: post #5
ryanobjc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The language features for making it big are realistically:

- how easy is it to understand this language

- how quickly can i do something useful in it?

PHP -> It made it trivial to make active webpages, something that was a disaster in other languages until recently. Do you even remember perl cgi-bin?

Java -> provided a realistic replacement for C++.

BASIC -> People go could from 0 to program nearly instantly.

The "good vs bad" you hint at just doesn't really register on this scale.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#14

Post by ryanobjc »

programminggeek wrote: post #9
ryanobjc wrote: post #2

From 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 Ru…

I'm gonna sound like a weirdo, but I still like Java, especially Java 8, and IntelliJ.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#15

Post by ryanobjc »

camus2 wrote: post #11
ch4s3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think achieving PHP or Java levels of adoption is as much about timing and serendipity as it does language features.

A majority of PHP users are not devs and just know enough to upload files on a server or tweak Wordpress.There is not that much serious PHP "engineers". Anyway,it's great Scala choosed the JVM because it can be part of the stack of any business that already relies on it.That's what matters IHMO.If it is not fit,one can still switch back to java and still use the jar developped in scala or exploit java libs.

That's just a load of CS elite nonsense.

Mass market programming languages are built on the back of "non serious engineers" as you call it. PHP is big because it is legible and works for literally 10 million "not serious PHP engineers".

Ridiculing the funnel of people into engineering is insane. This comment alone is the reason why 50 women didn't go into CS this week.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#16

Post by ryanobjc »

eranation wrote: post #10

Scala 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 longe…

Productivity of a programming language is a tricky bit.

Definitely you can achieve more with less characters in Scala than Java. Are you paying by the character?

For me, legibility and long term readability is the most dominating factor out of any. This is really subjective, but saving on characters you have to type, only to make the code a lot harder to read seems like penny wise pound foolish to me.

And to pull out an expert who agrees with me, Linus slaps C++ around for many of the same reasons. He noted that it's a lot easier to review patches in C because there is no hidden features (eg: operator overloading) that prevent comprehension.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#17

Post by army »

ryanobjc wrote: post #13
ssmoot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true at all. There are plenty of "bad" languages that have become popular.

The language features for making it big are realistically: - how easy is it to understand this language - how quickly can i do something useful in it? PHP -> It made it trivial to make active webpages, something that was a disaster in other languages until recently. Do you even remember perl cgi-bin? Java -> provided a realistic replacement for C++. BASIC -> People go could from 0 to program nearly instantly. The "go…

Right, I think people forget that Java essentially aimed to be a vastly simplified version of C++ with garbage collection and memory safety. This was something a lot of people were crying out for at the time. There were some bad decisions in early Java (making data structures synchronized by default, lack of generics), but it's got to the point now where it's pretty good at what it's intended to be.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#18

Post by steffan »

ryanobjc wrote: post #15
camus2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A majority of PHP users are not devs and just know enough to upload files on a server or tweak Wordpress.There is not that much serious PHP "engineers". Anyway,it's great Scala choosed the JVM because it can be part of the stack of any business that already relies on it.That's what matters IHMO.If it is not fit,one can still switch back to java and still use the jar developped in scala or exploit java libs.

That's just a load of CS elite nonsense. Mass market programming languages are built on the back of "non serious engineers" as you call it. PHP is big because it is legible and works for literally 10 million "not serious PHP engineers". Ridiculing the funnel of people into engineering is insane. This comment alone is the reason why 50 women didn't go into CS this week.

Hyperbole much? If a man or woman is that put off by this sort of comment, they're probably more suited for another field of endeavor.

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#19

Post by lmm »

ryanobjc wrote: post #2

From 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'm using it in industry right now, and my biggest complaint would be along the lines of "it's sold out". I'm very worried that Odersky's talk of "simplifying" the type system will mean removing features that I use and depend on (in my real, revenue-generating applications).

Re: Scala – The Simple Parts

#20

Post by virmundi »

ryanobjc wrote: post #16
eranation wrote: post #10

Scala 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 longe…

Productivity of a programming language is a tricky bit. Definitely you can achieve more with less characters in Scala than Java. Are you paying by the character? For me, legibility and long term readability is the most dominating factor out of any. This is really subjective, but saving on characters you have to type, only to make the code a lot harder to read seems like penny wise pound foolish to me. And to pull out…

I'm curious to see how Scala matures. Right now the community is really into the FP side. So much so that they want to make everything look like Haskell. So we've got operators and types and nomenclature that doesn't make sense to the average developer. So the developers could mature/advance/become-academic or they could take the good parts of Scala and treat it as Java++. I, frankly, think the second is better.
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