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The real question: is it worth it? Up to now I could successfully avoid learning Scala. My problem with it is the complexity that the language by itself introdu

The real question: is it worth it? Up to now I could successfully avoid learning Scala. My problem with it is the complexity that the language by itself introduces and the readability of code that comes out at the end. Maybe I am just valuing simplicity too much when it comes to programming languages. Anyways thanks for the impatient guide!

TurboHaskal 11y ago
Tons of companies make big bucks out of making stuff more complex then selling training and consultancy services. Lightbend is one of them.
terryf 11y ago
I'd say yes. It certainly is hard and I spent the first few months wrestling with the syntax, but when you figure out all the puzzle pieces and they come together, then it suddenly turns very beautiful and terse. The terseness is probably what makes the learning hardest, but there is utility there, because you don't have to focus on the boilerplate, but can see more of the algorithm at once. Also, anything that moves you more towards fp is a good thing, because again, when you start to get it and manage to apply it in the correct way, it is extremely elegant and composable.
20andup 11y ago
Yes as a programmer. No as startup guy. For me, it's like learning to do multiplications instead of just adding and subtracting. You will still get the same answer at the end. For a startup, you don't want to your programmers to learn cause its a heavy investment in terms of time. Adding and subtracting works just fine so they often advocate that route. You definitely get to the end goal, but when it comes to learning new things, you are never certain what the outcome will be.
- davedx 11y ago
  We started with Scala when we were a startup. It's worked out very well for us: our orchestration layer in Scala has been maintainable and scaled well as the organisation grew, and the power of Scala has meant each change is small and focused (i.e. doesn't have the verbosity and boilerplate of Java).
  - 20andup 11y ago
    Thats good to hear! I am all for Scala by the way! I am a Scala developer :)
- haggy 11y ago
  Im currently at a startup and we're trying to introduce more Scala into the pipeline. I agree that languages like NodeJS can speed up time to market slightly but we are taking a huge hit for it right now as we try to scale with 5x/10x load. I really wish we introduced more Scala/Java up front.
plinkplonk 11y ago
If you have to use the JVM and don't want to code in Java, your options are Scala or Clojure (maybe Groovy?). Then it comes down to essentially the tradeoff between a static typesystem vs macros (imho, ymmv etc). I second the reccomendation for Chuisano and Bjarnasaon's "Functional Programming in Scala".
- vorg 11y ago
  Apache Groovy is really for those quick'n'dirty scripts manipulating and testing Java classes -- that's its original use case. Later it added a MOP so Grails, a knock-off of Rails, would work, though Grails use is fast waning -- not many people upgraded their websites to Grails 3, or start new projects in it. Gradle then started using it as a DSL, so there's now a few thousand sites using the non-Turing Complete features of Groovy in 20-line build files. When Groovy 2 came along with static compilation and eventually targeting Android, not many people upgraded, prefering to stick with Groovy 1.8. The programmer who put the static compilation into Groovy now works at something else, and no-one's replaced him. So really Groovy's not a contender for building systems in the way Scala or Kotlin are, which were both designed for static compilation from the ground up. Nor does Groovy have syntactic macros the way Clojure has -- you need to write screes of Java code to implement a single annotation.
- arkadiytehgraet 11y ago
  What about Kotlin? Its 1.0.0 has been recently released and comes as "pragmatic" Java, bringing a lot of useful features and having more concise yet readable syntax. Also, the Java interop is really good (better than that of Scala, for instance).
  - lmm 11y ago
    The Java interop is worse than that of Scala - Kotlin can't represent Java's variance (i.e. existential types) so it has hacks to avoid it. It doesn't have the maturity or ecosystem of Scala. The "pragmatic" design feels like they took a grab-bag of features from Scala and implemented all the simpler use cases individually, with no appreciation for the underlying coherence; IMO the language will not be able to evolve because it has too many special cases. And Ceylon does everything it does but better. Kotlin is a triumph of marketing hype, nothing more.
lmm 11y ago
It's the best language going these days, IMO; it's a real sweet spot in terms of power, flexibility, maturity, ecosystem and learning curve. It's not the best at any one thing but it's the best overall language. Haskell is possibly more powerful, but it's (for many people) harder to learn and doesn't have quite the same library/tool support. Ceylon (or Idris) is probably better designed, but you won't find much in the way of libraries for it. OCaml brings shorter startup times, but worse throughput and a smaller community. F# might be a little more elegant and have good tools, but it doesn't have the same power.
- Chris2048 11y ago
  How does it compare to Python or Ruby?
  - StreamBright 11y ago
    https://www.python.org/doc/essays/comparisons/ https://www.python.org/doc/essays/comparisons/ "Java Python programs are generally expected to run slower than Java programs, but they also take much less time to develop. Python programs are typically 3-5 times shorter than equivalent Java programs." I think Python performance wise a less attractive options than Java or Scala. At least according to the authors. Development time is a different question.
    - Chris2048 11y ago
      DEv/debug time is expensive, and there are options for python - http://quant-econ.net/py/need_for_speed.html http://quant-econ.net/py/need_for_speed.html
      - lmm 11y ago
        Absolutely - if I could reliably write correct code first time then Python might well be a better option. Reduced debugging time is my biggest reason for preferring Scala. In particular the ability to refactor with confidence is exponentially helpful (you can keep your APIs clean and clear, which feeds back in and helps prevent mistakes). Having the safety of a typed language without having to sacrifice any of the clarity of Python was a real revelation.
incepted 11y ago
Take a look at Kotlin and Ceylon and see for yourself. To me, they both embody picking the best features of Scala while leaving out the extra baggage.

TurboHaskal 11y ago

Tons of companies make big bucks out of making stuff more complex then selling training and consultancy services. Lightbend is one of them.

terryf 11y ago

I'd say yes. It certainly is hard and I spent the first few months wrestling with the syntax, but when you figure out all the puzzle pieces and they come together, then it suddenly turns very beautiful and terse. The terseness is probably what makes the learning hardest, but there is utility there, because you don't have to focus on the boilerplate, but can see more of the algorithm at once. Also, anything that moves you more towards fp is a good thing, because again, when you start to get it and manage to apply it in the correct way, it is extremely elegant and composable.

20andup 11y ago

Yes as a programmer. No as startup guy. For me, it's like learning to do multiplications instead of just adding and subtracting. You will still get the same answer at the end. For a startup, you don't want to your programmers to learn cause its a heavy investment in terms of time. Adding and subtracting works just fine so they often advocate that route. You definitely get to the end goal, but when it comes to learning new things, you are never certain what the outcome will be.

davedx 11y ago
We started with Scala when we were a startup. It's worked out very well for us: our orchestration layer in Scala has been maintainable and scaled well as the organisation grew, and the power of Scala has meant each change is small and focused (i.e. doesn't have the verbosity and boilerplate of Java).
- 20andup 11y ago
  Thats good to hear! I am all for Scala by the way! I am a Scala developer :)
haggy 11y ago
Im currently at a startup and we're trying to introduce more Scala into the pipeline. I agree that languages like NodeJS can speed up time to market slightly but we are taking a huge hit for it right now as we try to scale with 5x/10x load. I really wish we introduced more Scala/Java up front.

plinkplonk 11y ago

If you have to use the JVM and don't want to code in Java, your options are Scala or Clojure (maybe Groovy?). Then it comes down to essentially the tradeoff between a static typesystem vs macros (imho, ymmv etc). I second the reccomendation for Chuisano and Bjarnasaon's "Functional Programming in Scala".

vorg 11y ago
Apache Groovy is really for those quick'n'dirty scripts manipulating and testing Java classes -- that's its original use case. Later it added a MOP so Grails, a knock-off of Rails, would work, though Grails use is fast waning -- not many people upgraded their websites to Grails 3, or start new projects in it. Gradle then started using it as a DSL, so there's now a few thousand sites using the non-Turing Complete features of Groovy in 20-line build files. When Groovy 2 came along with static compilation and eventually targeting Android, not many people upgraded, prefering to stick with Groovy 1.8. The programmer who put the static compilation into Groovy now works at something else, and no-one's replaced him. So really Groovy's not a contender for building systems in the way Scala or Kotlin are, which were both designed for static compilation from the ground up. Nor does Groovy have syntactic macros the way Clojure has -- you need to write screes of Java code to implement a single annotation.
arkadiytehgraet 11y ago
What about Kotlin? Its 1.0.0 has been recently released and comes as "pragmatic" Java, bringing a lot of useful features and having more concise yet readable syntax. Also, the Java interop is really good (better than that of Scala, for instance).
- lmm 11y ago
  The Java interop is worse than that of Scala - Kotlin can't represent Java's variance (i.e. existential types) so it has hacks to avoid it. It doesn't have the maturity or ecosystem of Scala. The "pragmatic" design feels like they took a grab-bag of features from Scala and implemented all the simpler use cases individually, with no appreciation for the underlying coherence; IMO the language will not be able to evolve because it has too many special cases. And Ceylon does everything it does but better. Kotlin is a triumph of marketing hype, nothing more.

lmm 11y ago

It's the best language going these days, IMO; it's a real sweet spot in terms of power, flexibility, maturity, ecosystem and learning curve. It's not the best at any one thing but it's the best overall language. Haskell is possibly more powerful, but it's (for many people) harder to learn and doesn't have quite the same library/tool support. Ceylon (or Idris) is probably better designed, but you won't find much in the way of libraries for it. OCaml brings shorter startup times, but worse throughput and a smaller community. F# might be a little more elegant and have good tools, but it doesn't have the same power.

Chris2048 11y ago
How does it compare to Python or Ruby?
- StreamBright 11y ago
  https://www.python.org/doc/essays/comparisons/ https://www.python.org/doc/essays/comparisons/ "Java Python programs are generally expected to run slower than Java programs, but they also take much less time to develop. Python programs are typically 3-5 times shorter than equivalent Java programs." I think Python performance wise a less attractive options than Java or Scala. At least according to the authors. Development time is a different question.
  - Chris2048 11y ago
    DEv/debug time is expensive, and there are options for python - http://quant-econ.net/py/need_for_speed.html http://quant-econ.net/py/need_for_speed.html
    - lmm 11y ago
      Absolutely - if I could reliably write correct code first time then Python might well be a better option. Reduced debugging time is my biggest reason for preferring Scala. In particular the ability to refactor with confidence is exponentially helpful (you can keep your APIs clean and clear, which feeds back in and helps prevent mistakes). Having the safety of a typed language without having to sacrifice any of the clarity of Python was a real revelation.

incepted 11y ago

Take a look at Kotlin and Ceylon and see for yourself. To me, they both embody picking the best features of Scala while leaving out the extra baggage.