Comments on: On Scala’s future

By: A.R.

A.R. — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:40:34 +0000

Scala is nicer and “less verbose” than Java but unfortunately this does not translate to fewer keystrokes and mouseclicks. In an IDE like Eclipse, a lot of the time-saving IDE features work only in Java.

By: Resisting Scala – Why good managers resist great new technologies | PuneTech

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:00:00 +0000

[…] replacement for Java. I’ve also read some interesting writeups about Scala adoption such as On Scala’s Future and A Tipping Point for Scala. While I used to code a lot, my responsibilities today require me to […]

By: poko

poko — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:43:55 +0000

i think it’s always misleading when power users/lang designers (who go deep when looking at a language) try to predict what a “normal developer” needs to understand in order to get stuff done in a given language.

If we just take java, how many developers do you know who learned the language like, ok let’s study the whole type system first?

my guess is that most developers learn a language differently. They learn how to use simple data structures, how to read from a file, how to iterate through collections, what the standard control structures are, how to handle exceptions, how inheritance and concurrency work on a basic level.

And in these areas scala is in fact simpler than java.

By: Why should I switch to Scala ? | /var/log/mind

Why should I switch to Scala ? | /var/log/mind — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:33:50 +0000

By: Jon-Anders Teigen

Jon-Anders Teigen — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:55:20 +0000

@Bubak
Have you read all 700+ pages of Odersky, Spoon and Venners “Programming in Scala” and concluded that “this is just some sugar” on top of java ?
That is truly amazing!

@Igor
Arguing that one should use weaker tools for building large things seems odd. If your developers consistently hurt themselves with java, then sure – they will hurt themselves more with scala. But if they do great things, they will do greater things with scala.

By: Fan?

Fan? — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:30:48 +0000

So how close does Fan (http://www.fandev.org/) come to meeting Charles’ goals? My impression is that it comes pretty close…

By: Bubak

Bubak — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:14:29 +0000

My biggest worry is binary compatibility. Program compiled with 2.7 does not work on 2.8. In Java I can still work with 10 years old library (log4j for example).

Also to gain significant market share from Java it must be far better than Java. Now it just adds some suggar, it helps but is not 10x better.

I am using Scala for my personal projects, but would not recommend it as Java replacement to my boss.

By: Igor

Igor — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 08:30:37 +0000

I do admit that Scala is a very interesting experiment. However I would suggest “A” without a single chance for B, but I hope Scala will be used by more pragmatic language designers as an inspiration.
To be considered as a true Java competitor Scala looks too flexible in its syntax and the mix of OO and functional style makes the situation even worse.
I cannot imagine a really big enterprise application containing millions lines of code written in Scala. Such an applications use to evolve for years with many developers of very different skills involved. In this situation the excessive flexibility should be considered as a huge disadvantage.
Just my opinion. Will be glad to be wrong.

By: jeo

jeo — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:33:14 +0000

Corporates may not move to Scala (or Clojure) anytime soon, but that’ll be their loss. It’ll just make it easier for smaller, smarter outfits to compete with them.

By: Sakuraba

Sakuraba — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:26:28 +0000

I think Charles Nutter said it best. I dont think Scala will dethrone Java, because there are a millions of Java developers out there who dont care about “a better language”. As sad as it is, they just want to get their job done and “if Java didnt change at all, that would be perfectly fine for these developers” (quote from Neal Gafter from a talk about VB getting closures before Java).

There is a massive amount of people that does not care about any alternatives on the JVM. Unless the tool support is equally great and no implications on build-system and deployment are necessary, there wont be a java-killer for them.

The sad thing is, there is a real business value in control abstractions and higher order functions, because it can lead to more robust code especially when dealing with closeable resources or whenever a deferred execution is desired.