Scala 3.0.0-M1

Scala 3 is a huge change. As someone who used Scala for years, but always wondered whether they can retain their users with competition from Kotlin, I'm extremely curious what this will mean for Scala in the long run.

I'm skeptical, because the cost to migrate is big. But I'm hopeful, because Scala is a language I like to write code in.

Edit: why am I skeptical? I know scala 3 is largely meant to be backwards compatible. But scala has always been a language of many styles ("java without semicolon" vs "haskell compiled with scalac"). All this new syntax in scala three adds a whole new dimension to this issue.

I've always loved Scala and Scala 3 is shaping up to be extremely exciting. Love the new ADTs and braceless syntax: really gives the language a cleaner and more ML inspired feel.

No other conventional language (including OCaml, F#, etc) seem to have the effortless kind of power Scala does.

The combination of the extremely powerful type system with the "OOFP" paradigm is a great combination. OOFP is such a great paradigm and it's unfortunate that no other language has embraced it.

It's ironic that I love Scala so much because I don't particularly enjoy dealing with the JVM and all its complexities and problem. But Scala is so good that it mostly makes up for it.

Scala does get a lot of hate (especially around here), but I've never really understood why. There's only one language I like more (kdb+/q), but that's a hard sell, especially because of the cost.

Too bad there's not really a ML/AI ecosystem around (besides Spark, which seems to be losing favor partially because of its embarrassing performance), because using Python is such a drag. However, I do understand why non-CS/type theory people might find the language intimidating.

But to that I'd say, I've seen new junior (though very smart) developers with no Scala or FP experience get onboarded and write idiomatic Scala code within a couple weeks to a month. The short term cost is more than worth it considering the absurd productivity compared to Java/Kotlin/Python/blublang.

Compared to OCaml/F#/Haskell, the improvement is a little less stark, though still clear imo (especially when considering editor tooling and available packages).

Just want to give Martin Odersky a shout out - what a legend this guy.

62 years old, going strong.

I'm not even in the java ecosystem but Scala strikes me as the most likely language to do something fresh and interesting on top of an existing ecosystem in the next few years, which is terrific news.

On the JVM, I think Scala won't have any major issues it is just another guest language and isn't used to sell InteliJ licenses.

Kotlin is chaining itself to Android, it will rule there thanks to Google's sponsorship, on everything else it is just yet another language to chose from with a weaker eco-system, used to sell InteliJ licenses.

Yep, https://arrow-kt.io/

Just give it a couple of more years.