What's Next for Scala • Hacker News Board

Re: What's Next for Scala

#201

Post by pkolaczk » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #181

hota_mazi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brainfuck's spec fits in one page. As does Whitespace's spec. These two languages are impossible to write code in because of their complexity. It's completely mystifying to me that even today, Martin still uses the "spec size" argument in his keynotes to attempt to demonstrate that Scala is a simple language, and it demonstrates a complete ignorance of what language design actually is, or a troubling disingenuity mea…

Creator of Scala believes, and advocates, Scala is simpler than Java? Wow.

Because it is simpler than Java, in particular when you limit it to the subset of features covered by Java only. Many Scala features that do exist in Java are more complicated in Java. And some do not exist at all, which means you have to emulate them by writing more boilerplate code.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#202

Post by wice » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #21

Scala has the reputation of being fun to create stuff with, but horrendous when understanding other people’s creations. Is this still true?

Since the syntax didn't (and cannot) become any less flexible, it's unfortunately still true and always will be. As annoying as it is to struggle with the rigid syntax of Java while writing it (which also results in overly verbose code), reading it is far easier than Scala (or even Kotlin in some cases), because Java code always looks like Java code.

And since we spend way more time looking at and interpreting other people's code than writing our own, personally I think Java is better for large projects. I wish it wasn't the case but it is.

Re: What's Next for Scala

#203

Post by maxnevermind » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

yashap wrote: post #93

jane_red wrote: post #56

Scala is a beautiful and elegant language. I really thought that it would be one of my favourite languages when I first started working with it. However, after some time I got disenchanted. First, Scala is hard. Projects written by one person quickly become a deep functional labyrinth and custom architectural patterns because Scala is so expressive and you can do all kind of twists. Second, the entrance level remains…

IMO, it really depends on the team you join, as with most programming projects. Scala can be used in a classic mutable OOP manner, as if you were writing Java in 2005, or if you heavily buy into pure FB libraries it can be used basically like it's Haskell, but IMO neither of these approaches embrace the strengths of the language. It's meant to be a true mix of OOP and functional paradigms, not going extreme one way o…

What types of projects you have been working on?