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Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

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Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#51

Post by seanmcdirmid »

phazmatis wrote: post #42

My problems with Scala: 1) src/main/scala/com/thingy/actualthingy JUST to get to the root of your code. 2) Recompiling/restarting is slow because liftweb and other frameworks are overly complex. 3) I'm 90% sure it would be possible to create a PRY-like debugging tool that runs your code in interpreted mode and drops you into the REPL at a certain point in your code. And yet, it'll never get built because Scala hacker…

Number 4 because...Pascal. This was actually a huge innovation over Algo's syntax back in...the late 1960s. I think Martin Odersky studied under Niklaus Wirth, so the lineage makes sense; I also think its better than the old early 60s Algo way of defining variables.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#52

Post by danenania »

jadyoyster wrote: post #19
fat0wl wrote: post #14

I've been using Scala just to learn Play framework (I know I could use Java but I thought I'd be adventurous). I think in truth, though, if there were a web framework in Clojure as well received as Play I would be bounding down that path instead. Clojure seems to be where a lot of the JVM interested is heading yet we're not there yet for some reason.

I've been wondering - having never used a web framework except for some RoR - what people miss in the idiomatic Clojure way of doing web (composing libraries like Ring, Compojure, Enlive etc). Care to share?

I'm working with these libraries for a web project now, and I'd say the main problem is lack of comprehensive documentation. If you're doing something slightly off the beaten path and get stuck, it's quite likely that you'll have to resort to the source code to solve your problem.

There's nothing so terrible about that per se--it's a great way to learn--but it can feel like a high friction workflow compared to Rails, especially getting started. I think it's primarily a function of community size and library maturity, but there's a cultural element as well. Rails has more of a beginner-friendliness-is-good mindset (even when library internals are fugly), while in Clojure the focus is more on the strength of the functionality and less on easily grokkable apis (though there are notable exceptions).

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#53

Post by chrismorgan »

axiak wrote: post #44
chrismorgan wrote: post #37

The section on HTTP headers and typing is a little concerning to me. I've been making rust-http recently and (before I was aware of Spray) I felt strongly about the typing. So, I'd like to discuss this. Am I wrong after all? Here clearly is someone that disagrees with me. I think I should probably write up a long blog post on the topic explaining my reasoning and so forth. rust-http is, at present at least, rejecting…

IMHO, libraries like this should always have an easy "out", where the default is strongly typed, but the user of the library can explicitly escape the known behavior if need be. As a (albeit poor example), I once inherited a click tracking system that uses Java Jersey. The standard response object has a .redirect(URI uri) method. Unfortunately, many "URI"s we receive from the world are not actually value, and the jav…

At present, in rust-http, invalid values will be dropped; that will be changing so that you can retrieve a bad header value (https://github.com/chris-morgan/rust-http/issues/27). Writing invalid HTTP, on the other hand, is something that I'm in two minds about. You shouldn't be allowed to do it, but it may be necessary somewhere along the way. At present, you can write invalid headers through the use of the extension headers—`response.headers.extension.set(~"Date", ~"invalid")`, for example. I certainly don't want to advertise it broadly, but I'm thinking guaranteeing that that will always work is perhaps the best plan.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#54

Post by JulianMorrison »

Problem: author is pining for Go, and doesn't know it.

Solution: author should abandon the JVM ecosystem and use Go.

- Fast compiles.

- Ultra simple, non extensible syntax, yet not verbose in practise.

- The code you see is 100% of the code.

- A culture of implementing the simple algorithm.

- Stable, with version compatibility guarantees.

- Nobody is trying to make the types jump through hoops, so the type inference works.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#55

Post by gfodor »

Several years ago I picked up Odersky's book. I got a few hundred pages in, considered the types of problems I had encountered in my career so far, and decided life is too short to be spending my time learning some hyper-complex programming language that seemed, like C++, to seem unable to say "no" to introducing complexity where it would provide minimal upside in Getting Shit Done.

Instead, I learned Clojure. I use Ruby, the epitome of comfortable languages, for most things, and when the hard problems come up, I use clojure. My next major scientific computing problem, rare as they are, will be in Julia instead of Matlab for prototyping and java for production. Scala seems to be the hard language for easy problems. No thanks.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#56

Post by saryant »

taeric wrote: post #43
saryant wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll echo all of this (minus scalaz, we don't use that). I'll give an example of the power of Scala's type system. When I first convinced one of our founders to give Scala a try, he used it to write the first pass of our analytics service. He'd never written Scala before but once it compiled, it ran correctly on the first try, that's the power of its type system.

Not to be too big of an ass, but this could just be the skill of your founder. Or do you believe it is impossible to have compiling code that does not do as its author intended?

Obviously it's possible to write code that compiles while still not meeting requirements. My point is that the by leveraging the type system he was able to offload a lot of those checks to compile time rather than runtime.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#57

Post by fizx »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #16

To be honest with you, I use Scala as a better Java. Which means I still code imperatively (and use null instead of None) but with less noise (semi colons etc). But, esp when working with collections, I take advantage of Scala's features. It's not perfect, but it works wonderfully. I can always revisit/refactor my code again later.

You might be better off using a pre-release snapshot of Java 8 as a better Java. You'll get closures, functional collections, and better type inference. I bet Eclipse and Intellij support it better too.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#58

Post by mortyseinfeld »

Because of Clojure's dynamic typing and idiomatic use of lots of nested expressions it turns out to be a read-only language for me.

Scala seems to have a huge image problem. I think part of the problem is that Odersky and crew have never written the treatise on how to use Scala's OO and FP effectively. I'm surprised that Typesafe didn't come up with their own web framework instead of using Play.

One lesson to be learned is that these days you need good IDE integration and fast compiles (incremental) for rapid development. But Scala IDE support has come a long ways in the past year or so. The Eclipse Scala worksheets is awesome. I like it better than a standard REPL. Intellij support is still going strong too.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#59

Post by timtadh »

chrismorgan wrote: post #37

The section on HTTP headers and typing is a little concerning to me. I've been making rust-http recently and (before I was aware of Spray) I felt strongly about the typing. So, I'd like to discuss this. Am I wrong after all? Here clearly is someone that disagrees with me. I think I should probably write up a long blog post on the topic explaining my reasoning and so forth. rust-http is, at present at least, rejecting…

The way I look at type systems is they are an automatic proof system for programs. So you must ask yourself what are you proving with your type system? I looked at your write up on the github issue and from what I see you are moving some checking into compile time. However, when it comes to "parsing problems" (like: HTTP, XML, command line args, etc...) there isn't much to move. This is because the data doesn't yet exist that the proof operates on. So it really can only check the plumbing after the parsing - which often isn't that much.

In the past when I have used such libraries they have been a pain - especially for loose formats like HTTP headers. Type system come with a cost, you need to carefully consider the burden you are placing on the programmer to see if the benefits out way the cost.

Re: Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

#60

Post by eranation »

I tried learning Clojure, I really did, and I have to agree, the syntax is simpler, but I can't really read Clojure or code in Clojure the way I do in Scala, I don't know why. Whenever I read articles about Scala, I keep finding it amusing, prehaps this is because I had experience with Java, but for me Scala is a life saver, can't go back to Java after this. And I won't go back to Ruby, Python or JavaScript. So I can't really understand what these articles try to achieve, it's like the "don't buy bitcoin" articles, not sure what is the goal. If you don't like Scala, thanks for sharing, but I don't see how it affects me, I will still continue using it as my go to language until I find something better (there are contenders, Kotlin, Ceylon, Dart, TypeScript, and my favorite now - Nimrod, but there is still a big gap for me to fully switch)

So for someone like me who wants a statically typed language (there goes Ruby, Python JavaScript, Clojure), who thinks Haskell is too academic to be really productive (I have to think too much to get things done with it) and who don't get what is all the rage about Go (perhaps because I'm not a system programmer, in any case I still don't get it, sorry) This leaves me with no other options (except C#, which I would probably use if it was really portable)

Scala is not perfect, but I feel more productive with it than with any other language, if anyone who never used Scala will decide not to even try it because of this article, I wish them luck, but I doubt this will be the case. for those who use it, they will still continue.

So I really don't think I understand what is the point of such an article. Try the language for yourself, if you like it use it, if not, and you have a choice, don't.

p.s. for all those poor bastards who are forced to use Java at work, Scala is by far a gift from the Gods, so it helps to keep things in proportions, one man's source for a rant article, is other's source of means to finish work at 5pm and go back to the SO and kids. (they would go back at 1pm but their Sun Certified Java EE team lead brain will explode if they will use Clojure, with Scala your EJBs or Spring code can still look recognizable, perhaps a bit more pretty) p.s. did I forgot to say I love Scala?

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