15 ms·

I am curious to what extent Paul Phillips lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0] is just a rant or in

by piokoch 11y ago

I am curious to what extent Paul Phillips lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0] is just a rant or in-depth Scala criticism. If he's right then seems that we should not expect bright future for Scala. I am wondering what Scala experts would say (I don't know Scala sufficiently to trust my judgment)?

bonobo3000 11y ago
The rant is mostly about the Scala collections API. I think the "expert" opinion is that yes, Scala collections are broken and incredibly complex, and theres a proposal for new implementations here: https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/818 https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/818 I think the talk was pretty influential, but atleast the community is responding. I don't think it spells doom for Scala.
- merb 11y ago
  I think most things he talked about are also fixed or deprecated. Collections are getting clearer and clearer.
- amock 11y ago
  More than the specific problems with collections that he talks about, I think the problem of allowing clearly broken methods into the standard collections is the real issue. Why would they accept an implementation f map where map isn't safely composable? Why would they use incorrect type signatures? Why would they allow so many casts? I haven't finished the video yet but every issue he brings up seems to be about more than a mistake in a library. It looks to me like you can't trust Scala because the people behind it are ok with accepting clearly broken or poor quality implementations.
  - adriaanm 11y ago
    You don't have to trust us (though you can -- trust me :-)). Take a look at the source, check some references of happy Scala users. Submit a PR to fix what you don't like. Ask a question on our forums/stack overflow. Whatever you decide, I'd recommend rounding out your view of Scala by consulting more sources than Paul's rants. There's a lot of hyperbole there. This of course doesn't mean he's wrong, and we've certainly listened to him and fixed some of the issues he complained about (I was in the front row of that talk).
adriaanm 11y ago
Paul's a perfectionist. Sure, the collections aren't perfect, and we will continue to improve them, but you should keep some background in mind when watching that video: he was pretty frustrated with issues in Scala development not directly related to (but, I guess, embodied by) the collections. Some of the stuff he pointed in that video was already deprecated at the time of his presentation, and we've fixed other issues since. We have to strike a careful balance between fixing "obviously" wrong code and breaking code that had come to rely on the perhaps not-so-obvious wrongness...

by piokoch 11y ago

bonobo3000 11y ago

The rant is mostly about the Scala collections API. I think the "expert" opinion is that yes, Scala collections are broken and incredibly complex, and theres a proposal for new implementations here: https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/818 https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/818 I think the talk was pretty influential, but atleast the community is responding. I don't think it spells doom for Scala.

merb 11y ago
I think most things he talked about are also fixed or deprecated. Collections are getting clearer and clearer.
amock 11y ago
More than the specific problems with collections that he talks about, I think the problem of allowing clearly broken methods into the standard collections is the real issue. Why would they accept an implementation f map where map isn't safely composable? Why would they use incorrect type signatures? Why would they allow so many casts? I haven't finished the video yet but every issue he brings up seems to be about more than a mistake in a library. It looks to me like you can't trust Scala because the people behind it are ok with accepting clearly broken or poor quality implementations.
- adriaanm 11y ago
  You don't have to trust us (though you can -- trust me :-)). Take a look at the source, check some references of happy Scala users. Submit a PR to fix what you don't like. Ask a question on our forums/stack overflow. Whatever you decide, I'd recommend rounding out your view of Scala by consulting more sources than Paul's rants. There's a lot of hyperbole there. This of course doesn't mean he's wrong, and we've certainly listened to him and fixed some of the issues he complained about (I was in the front row of that talk).

adriaanm 11y ago

Paul's a perfectionist. Sure, the collections aren't perfect, and we will continue to improve them, but you should keep some background in mind when watching that video: he was pretty frustrated with issues in Scala development not directly related to (but, I guess, embodied by) the collections. Some of the stuff he pointed in that video was already deprecated at the time of his presentation, and we've fixed other issues since. We have to strike a careful balance between fixing "obviously" wrong code and breaking code that had come to rely on the perhaps not-so-obvious wrongness...