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Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

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Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#21

Post by jules »

_delirium wrote: post #18
nadam wrote: post #3

My general feeling is that there is a business-model problem in the tech industry. The most important technolgies are underfunded. They are created by smart people in their free time, or by companies who do not have enough money. For example I've looked at Scala's Eclipse plugin: it was a horror. It is just question of money (hiring a bunch of good developers) to create IDE support which is not totally buggy and not…

If you compare to where the previous generation of solid PLs and infrastructure research/development came from, I think what's missing currently is well-funded industrial research labs where such developers used to be able to park themselves while still releasing their languages/compilers for free, sidestepping the business-model question. Not all languages came that way, but some of the major ones did: C was Bell La…

Microsoft works that way with C#, VB and F#. And they even fund Haskell research. Judging by the quality of their output, it seems to be working very well.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#22

Post by Maro »

cfontes wrote: post #6

Again, Scala is just another tool it's evolving and it's a very nice tool to know... Of course Java will always be around because it's easy to learn(I earn my money with it BTW) and it protects you from all kinds of stupid errors that newcomers could do in C , C++ or Javascript (memory management, Static Typed, etc...) but Scala provides a very flexible way to code a way that most Java devs are not used to, and there…

I downvoted you because your 2nd sentence consists of 107 words.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#23

Post by cfontes »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #19
cfontes wrote: post #6

Again, Scala is just another tool it's evolving and it's a very nice tool to know... Of course Java will always be around because it's easy to learn(I earn my money with it BTW) and it protects you from all kinds of stupid errors that newcomers could do in C , C++ or Javascript (memory management, Static Typed, etc...) but Scala provides a very flexible way to code a way that most Java devs are not used to, and there…

i'm in the same boat with you. anyway have you tried IntelliJ? its Scala support rocks, and combined with JRebel (free for Scala), it can help reduce development time. anyway i'm very sad to hear about current situation. i've been secretly wishing scala will become big.

Thanks I will try it. About Scala maybe it will, just give the Typesafe guys some time( or help them) and hope for the best :D. I myself will not quit studying it because of this, I do it because I like it.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#24

Post by cfontes »

Maro wrote: post #22
cfontes wrote: post #6

Again, Scala is just another tool it's evolving and it's a very nice tool to know... Of course Java will always be around because it's easy to learn(I earn my money with it BTW) and it protects you from all kinds of stupid errors that newcomers could do in C , C++ or Javascript (memory management, Static Typed, etc...) but Scala provides a very flexible way to code a way that most Java devs are not used to, and there…

I downvoted you because your 2nd sentence consists of 107 words.

Thanks for the explanation, but where is the rule in English that states that a sentence cannot have 107 words ? I see posts with far more than that everyday here.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#25

Post by _delirium »

jules wrote: post #21
_delirium wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare to where the previous generation of solid PLs and infrastructure research/development came from, I think what's missing currently is well-funded industrial research labs where such developers used to be able to park themselves while still releasing their languages/compilers for free, sidestepping the business-model question. Not all languages came that way, but some of the major ones did: C was Bell La…

Microsoft works that way with C#, VB and F#. And they even fund Haskell research. Judging by the quality of their output, it seems to be working very well.

True, those are also good examples, though with the non-Haskell examples it's a bit closer to the Eiffel model, where a company develops a high-quality proprietary compiler/environment to sell.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#26

Post by jebberjeb »

pvillega wrote: post #15
philjackson wrote: post #10

I don't really know much about Scala or its ecosystem but I'm curious, what do they mean by: "Ridicule about parallel collections in 2.9 (one of its major new features)"

To sum it up (feel free to add corrections) one guy put a blog post saying that Parallel collections had many issues, etc etc... and the reality was that he misunderstood them somehow. As one guy put it, the collections do nice work but you have to know what you are doing (not all work can be broken into fragments that can be computed in parallel). He was kind of expecting otherwise. Not saying they are perfect, just…

I used them a bit with some image processing. Was awesome to see all 8 cores pegged w/ one line of code!

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#27

Post by jebberjeb »

michaels0620 wrote: post #17
mgkimsal wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that the positive/negative is irrelevant. Much of the discussion around Scala has been around how complicated it is, and ensuing discussions about how the person who thinks it's confusing is not smart enough, and how Scala is the "right way" to do things, because it's elegant, etc. Having a lot of those sorts of comments I don't think will guarantee future success.

I am a half step above a blub, but I've been doing some work in Scala and generally enjoy it. I do, however, think the Scala community needs to have a more convincing reply to the complexity argument than "You aren't smart enough to see its brilliance". My fear is that if things don't change, Scala will fall into a perl-like situation where it won't be able to shake its reputation and people will reject the language…

It's too late for that. Scala's community has been branded as a bunch of condescending intellectuals. Just like Ruby's community was branded as a bunch of pierced, macbook users in 2005. Neither are really true -- but first impressions mean everything.

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#28

Post by [deleted] »

cfontes wrote: post #24
Maro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because your 2nd sentence consists of 107 words.

Thanks for the explanation, but where is the rule in English that states that a sentence cannot have 107 words ? I see posts with far more than that everyday here.

[deleted]

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#29

Post by cfontes »

Maro wrote: post #22
cfontes wrote: post #6

Again, Scala is just another tool it's evolving and it's a very nice tool to know... Of course Java will always be around because it's easy to learn(I earn my money with it BTW) and it protects you from all kinds of stupid errors that newcomers could do in C , C++ or Javascript (memory management, Static Typed, etc...) but Scala provides a very flexible way to code a way that most Java devs are not used to, and there…

I downvoted you because your 2nd sentence consists of 107 words.

I was missing a goal to pratice my Scala so I wrote a script to find if you follow your rule, I stopped after getting something bigger than 107 words in order to not hurt HN.

After several 90+ words paragraphs I found this 138 words beauty :D.

" Maro 321 days ago | link | parent | on: "Nothing like this will be built again": a tour of...

When I was getting my degree is Physics we had a lab in the "student reactor", which was still in a large building of its own. As part of the lab we got to sit down to the control console of the reactor and control it, on our own. I remember I was turning one knob increasing the power output when suddenly there was a loud noise, everything shook, and the power output went to zero. Turned out it was the failsafe (I think cadmium rods dropped into the core) as I was too agressive with the controls --- it was a normal occurence for students. (All modern reactors are designed in a way that you can't overdrive them, they'll automatically shut down.) It was great fun and a story I'll be telling for the rest of my life. "

P.S: I didn't count the --- as a word !

Re: Offbeat: Scala by the end of 2011 – No Drama but Frustration is Growing

#30

Post by sp332 »

cfontes wrote: post #24
Maro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because your 2nd sentence consists of 107 words.

Thanks for the explanation, but where is the rule in English that states that a sentence cannot have 107 words ? I see posts with far more than that everyday here.

You should probably have some kind of punctuation after the word "code", and start a new sentence after the word "Joy". But it's not worth downvoting you.
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