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The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

scala-lang.org

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Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#41

Post by hocuspocus »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #35
ecshafer wrote: post #23

Scala isn't as hot as it used to be. I think the rough Scala 2->3 transition, coupled with improvements in the base Java language, emergence of Kotlin + Android support, and popularity of Python in data science and data pipelines (lets just do everything in one language became popular) kind of made Scala not quite as popular as it could have been. Plus the long compile times are a pain. However it seems to have a rea…

You got it. Scala had a shot being an early mover in the JVM functional programming space, but they really shot themselves in the foot with their version transition problems and tooling issues you allude to. Java is probably "good enough" for most shops now, and if you are not bound to the JVM I really don't understand why you would go with Scala today.

Scala's decline started before Scala 3, which brought its share of breakage (sometimes for dubious reasons, like the new syntax) but also fixed many warts. Tooling has improved a lot lately, but it's too late.

> if you are not bound to the JVM I really don't understand why you would go with Scala today.

Scala's metaprogramming abilities coupled to a powerful type system are still unmatched. Among mainstream languages, only TypeScript gets somewhat close. For your typical service oriented architecture, libraries such as Tapir or ZIO HTTP are pretty nice. I haven't found anything as pleasant in other languages.

That said if an LLM can write 95% of your code today, this point is a bit moot, sadly.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#42

Post by hocuspocus »

thefaux wrote: post #16
ATMLOTTOBEER wrote: post #15

Happy to see investment in sbt and the stdlib Sad to see code coverage tooling called out as something they’re spending money on Happy to see scala get sponsorship

The lead maintainer of sbt does it as a labor of love. I am very curious if he actually will be receiving any money.

He won't: https://bsky.app/profile/eed3si9n.com/post/3mdgbjkg4ck23

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#44

Post by rapnie »

epolanski wrote: post #22
oytis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python. Python is the most popular language designed in EU. EPFL is not even in EU

Others worth mentioning are Kotlin, Ada, Pascal, Haskell, Zig, Erlang, Elixir, Prolog, Ocaml.

Former EU, there's Gleam.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#45

Post by ecshafer »

sh3rl0ck wrote: post #26
ecshafer wrote: post #23

Scala isn't as hot as it used to be. I think the rough Scala 2->3 transition, coupled with improvements in the base Java language, emergence of Kotlin + Android support, and popularity of Python in data science and data pipelines (lets just do everything in one language became popular) kind of made Scala not quite as popular as it could have been. Plus the long compile times are a pain. However it seems to have a rea…

What would you categorise as a "cool looking job"?

Jobs that you work on hard, complicated things. Scala is relatively popular in Fintech and Finance in general. There's things like Chisel or Spark. But there are relatively few simple CRUD app companies using Scala.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#46

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

As a longtime Scala lover, I’m so happy to see this. Everyone in here hemming and hawing about version incompatibilities, build tooling and such conveniently forget the warts of other languages and their ecosystems. Scala is an incredible language, especially for the language being so flexible, which is a strength, not a weakness.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#47

Post by packetlost »

mikert89 wrote: post #33
ecshafer wrote: post #23

Scala isn't as hot as it used to be. I think the rough Scala 2->3 transition, coupled with improvements in the base Java language, emergence of Kotlin + Android support, and popularity of Python in data science and data pipelines (lets just do everything in one language became popular) kind of made Scala not quite as popular as it could have been. Plus the long compile times are a pain. However it seems to have a rea…

Scala is too complicated. Most scala code bases I have worked on have no enforced structure, the language allows for all sorts of unconventional programming paradigms

That's sorta the curse of Lisps too.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#48

Post by frakt0x90 »

mikert89 wrote: post #33
ecshafer wrote: post #23

Scala isn't as hot as it used to be. I think the rough Scala 2->3 transition, coupled with improvements in the base Java language, emergence of Kotlin + Android support, and popularity of Python in data science and data pipelines (lets just do everything in one language became popular) kind of made Scala not quite as popular as it could have been. Plus the long compile times are a pain. However it seems to have a rea…

Scala is too complicated. Most scala code bases I have worked on have no enforced structure, the language allows for all sorts of unconventional programming paradigms

This is exactly what turned me off. It supports so many paradigms that every line of code I wrote I had to sit and think if I was doing it the "right" way and it was miserable.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#49

Post by ezst »

Kriev wrote: post #36

What a waste of my taxes.

Happy to throw some of mine for that. Scala may not be as popular as some other languages, but it's relevant for use cases as diverse as those for which you would otherwise use Java/C#/Go, JS/TS, C/C++/Rust (via scala-jvm, scala-js and scala-native), and it's a very nice language to work with at that.

Re: The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

#50

Post by eweise »

frakt0x90 wrote: post #48
mikert89 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scala is too complicated. Most scala code bases I have worked on have no enforced structure, the language allows for all sorts of unconventional programming paradigms

This is exactly what turned me off. It supports so many paradigms that every line of code I wrote I had to sit and think if I was doing it the "right" way and it was miserable.

Part of that I think is the culture and not the language. Personally I try to use the least powerful method that gets the job done and that usually keeps me unblocked. In practice that usually means using it as a better Java and not going down the functional monad path. I know scala has gone through a rough patch and maybe migrating from 2 to 3 is painful. But if you try starting a new project now with the latest Scala 3, I think you'll find that its pretty nice. Even IDE support is pretty good.
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