Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

overwatering.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 324 posts

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#301

Post by syllogism »

MetaCosm wrote: post #278
tinco wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never work with scripting languages? (i.e., why is there no Python, Ruby or Javascript in your lists? or maybe I do'nt know Haxe, does that replace them?)

Most of the stuff I work on is highly concurrent. GILs are the devil. Almost all the joy and ease you from GIL languages is lost as you try to go concurrent and have to use (in python for example) multiprocess and gevent ... then you start getting caught on the rough edges and poor ideas in those tools... and everything falls apart.

Another option is to use Cython. You can declare a function "nogil", but then you can't call any native Python functions within it. It's good enough for some purposes, but not all.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#302

Post by mcv »

microtonal wrote: post #149
kvtrew76557 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've developed and maintained multiple large systems in a team using various languages. I would much rather maintain a system written in Scala than either Java or various scripting languages we've used and the view is shared by the whole team. It's far less verbose than Java and very maintainable compared to other very large systems written in scripting languages.

There are other JVM languages that are far less verbose than Java, without the complexity of Scala, with better compile times, and better compatibility with plain-old Java. For instance, Kotlin.

I was expecting Groovy, which is indeed less verbose than Java, less complex than Scala, and has excellent compatibility with Java. I don't know about compile times.

The main downside of Groovy is: it's not as fast. And of course the programming paradigm is less revolutionary and more pragmatic, though that could also be a big upside.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#303

Post by mcv »

k__ wrote: post #160
lemmsjid wrote: post #49

I'd say a lot of the critiques are fair but quite exaggerated. I work on a large Scala codebase and yes, the compile times for a fresh start across the codebase are very long, but TDD-type loops are very short, because you're generally waiting for two files (your test target and your test code). Still, the compiler performance in Scala is perhaps my chief criticism, though hardly a show-stopper. As codebases in any l…

When I read about Scala the first time I felt it was awesome! I bought some books and tried to get into it. But when I read production code it was aweful because of all the DSLs. Scala does much to reduce code to whats necessary, like python, but there is so much more that it does, which confuses the code readability later :\ The DSLs also lead to bad API design. The devs are always like "uhuuu if you don't like the…

When I finally picked up a book on Scala, I rejoiced when I read the chapter on parallelization with Actors and especially how they passed case classes around and automatically extracted data from them in their built-in switch statements. That stuff was fantastic!, concise, expressive and beautiful! Hallelujah!

The next chapter delved deeper into the typing system, and I recoiled in horror.

I still want to do Scala some day just to use their actor messaging, but there really is a very strict limit to how far a sane person can look into Scala. At some point, the Abyss looks into you, and if you're not careful, you'll also start building crazy DSLs with incomprehensible operators based on Type Declarations Man Was Not Meant To Know, just to maintain rigid type safety in some situation nobody really cares about.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#304

Post by jernfrost »

lemmsjid wrote: post #49

I'd say a lot of the critiques are fair but quite exaggerated. I work on a large Scala codebase and yes, the compile times for a fresh start across the codebase are very long, but TDD-type loops are very short, because you're generally waiting for two files (your test target and your test code). Still, the compiler performance in Scala is perhaps my chief criticism, though hardly a show-stopper. As codebases in any l…

Very well worded. But... yes there always has to be a but. You can make the same argument about any software development, even within the same language.

I worked on a large C++ project. Most code was written in a very concrete way. This lead to reams of boilerplate code which bothered me a lot. I thought it was difficult to grasp because there was so much code and there was no explanation of concepts. To me concepts are important. Instead I wrote high level but quite abstract code, but with good documentation of concepts I used.

Sadly I noticed people had big problems understanding my code. I tried to analyze why. My best explanation would be that they were not interested in software architecture like me so they could not recognize concepts and patterns as easily. Furthermore they were not used to reading documentation about concepts. They just wanted to look at the code right away. That is what they were used to. But that was hard, because my code was quite abstract.

I have no idea what the solution to this contradiction is.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#305

Post by vagif »

lemmsjid wrote: post #49

I'd say a lot of the critiques are fair but quite exaggerated. I work on a large Scala codebase and yes, the compile times for a fresh start across the codebase are very long, but TDD-type loops are very short, because you're generally waiting for two files (your test target and your test code). Still, the compiler performance in Scala is perhaps my chief criticism, though hardly a show-stopper. As codebases in any l…

Your main premise (expressive power vs readability) is wrong.

Take clojure. Both very expressive and very readable.

The problem of Scala is not that it is oh so awesome and expressive. It is in a failed attempt to marry two very complex worlds: OO and FP. Of course the complexity of language explodes on unsuspecting developers.

Scala is a cautionary tale for every language creator out there. Chose carefully what you pack into your language.

There's absolutely no need to create a monstrosity like scala in order to reduce boilerplate. Even such complex language as haskell is much simpler and more readable than scala.

That's the reason both OO and FP camps reject scala. It is OVERENGINEERED.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#306

Post by vorg »

mcv wrote: post #302
microtonal wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other JVM languages that are far less verbose than Java, without the complexity of Scala, with better compile times, and better compatibility with plain-old Java. For instance, Kotlin.

I was expecting Groovy, which is indeed less verbose than Java, less complex than Scala, and has excellent compatibility with Java. I don't know about compile times. The main downside of Groovy is: it's not as fast. And of course the programming paradigm is less revolutionary and more pragmatic, though that could also be a big upside.

See my comment below for more downsides...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836632

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#307

Post by edwinnathaniel »

nnq wrote: post #133
RyanZAG wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But because the plumbing must be laid out so meticulously and in every situation, it is often hard to see how things work at a high level. You can't see an architectural sketch in Java, you can only see endless classes in endlessly nested subdirectories. This is a very low level of abstraction, and helps the layperson (such as someone approaching a new open source project) build up an understanding from the base el…

> The only real outlier being Javascript which gets its popularity from being the only option for the browser. This is probably the reason for Javascript's popularity, but if you ignore some bad language design, Javascript is a very simple language with a very small number of concepts that you need to understand to start getting work done in it. Even Python (which I think is the simplest of the widely used dynamic la…

The problem is we can't ignore the bad language design.

Look around and see those (depending on how you view them) odd/complex "design patterns" that only exist in JavaScript to emulate missing features.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#308

Post by edwinnathaniel »

Pxtl wrote: post #229
lemmsjid wrote: post #49

I'd say a lot of the critiques are fair but quite exaggerated. I work on a large Scala codebase and yes, the compile times for a fresh start across the codebase are very long, but TDD-type loops are very short, because you're generally waiting for two files (your test target and your test code). Still, the compiler performance in Scala is perhaps my chief criticism, though hardly a show-stopper. As codebases in any l…

Once again, I will sing praises of C#. Some of the libraries are terrible, and it's Microsoft... but seriously, it fits the perfect happy medium between Java's clumsiness and Scala's everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink syntax.

Yet C# way too short from Java ecosystems (JVM, JMX, highly-concurrent system, agent, access to internal VM, better build+dependency+scm, tooling, overall).

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#309

Post by rossjudson »

Pxtl wrote: post #229
lemmsjid wrote: post #49

I'd say a lot of the critiques are fair but quite exaggerated. I work on a large Scala codebase and yes, the compile times for a fresh start across the codebase are very long, but TDD-type loops are very short, because you're generally waiting for two files (your test target and your test code). Still, the compiler performance in Scala is perhaps my chief criticism, though hardly a show-stopper. As codebases in any l…

Once again, I will sing praises of C#. Some of the libraries are terrible, and it's Microsoft... but seriously, it fits the perfect happy medium between Java's clumsiness and Scala's everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink syntax.

So what would you pull out of Scala's syntax? The language definition itself isn't all that big. It covers a fair amount of ground, of course. I don't see anything there I'd be happy to see go away. If it goes away, I just end up having to implement it myself...

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#310

Post by vithlani »

mcv wrote: post #303
k__ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read about Scala the first time I felt it was awesome! I bought some books and tried to get into it. But when I read production code it was aweful because of all the DSLs. Scala does much to reduce code to whats necessary, like python, but there is so much more that it does, which confuses the code readability later :\ The DSLs also lead to bad API design. The devs are always like "uhuuu if you don't like the…

When I finally picked up a book on Scala, I rejoiced when I read the chapter on parallelization with Actors and especially how they passed case classes around and automatically extracted data from them in their built-in switch statements. That stuff was fantastic!, concise, expressive and beautiful! Hallelujah! The next chapter delved deeper into the typing system, and I recoiled in horror. I still want to do Scala s…

Exactly my reaction.
Post reply on HN