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Interestingly though, Scala's model is basically Javascript, with a sound type system. As much as classes have been discredited as the fundamental structure of
by acjohnson55 11y ago
Interestingly though, Scala's model is basically Javascript, with a sound type system. As much as classes have been discredited as the fundamental structure of a system's architecture, they still prove their usefulness in Java and all the dynamic languages, and now a new crop of languages, like Swift, Rust, and Kotlin. So, I'd suggest that the Scala route may well be the path forward, especially post-DOT.
- lmm 11y agoHuh? Scala has nothing remotely resembling Javascript's weird prototype thing.
- acjohnson55 11y agoTrue, there's nothing in Scala that's like the dynamic inheritance/delegation of JS. But I'd say that in practice, people use Javascript's prototype functionality to implement static class- or mixin-based OOP.
- lmm 11y agoWell sure, but I'd say Scala's model is more similar to any of Java, Python, Ruby or C++ than it is to Javascript. So I don't see that it's a "Javascript model".
- willtim 11y agoThe "path forward" is purely a socioeconomic one and quite unrelated to any technical argument.
- lmm 11y agoNot true. The rise of Scala itself is probably the clearest counterexample; there is no socioeconomic case for it, it's succeeded purely on its technical merits.
- mafribe 11y agoQuite a bit of Scala's design was influenced by the goal of Java/JVM compatibility. This was clearly a purely "socioeconomic" decision. Without this compromise, Scala would never have taken off.
- lmm 11y agoI disagree. There are any number of failed JVM languages, and no non-JVM equivalent of Scala that I'm aware of. The biggest effect of the JVM on Scala was a "free" high-quality (and high-performance), multithreaded, garbage-collecting runtime (contrast with OCaml) which is an engineering-driven decision.
- mafribe 11y agoScala's success has technical and socio-economical causes. Here are some more non-technical factors. - The existence of a reasonably well-funded organisation (Typesafe/Lightbend) stewarding Scala was well-received. - Typesafe/Lightbend's independence also helped, in the sense that I cannot see a Scala-like language succeeded if it had come from e.g. Oracle. - Scala's open-sourcing of everything helped. - The well-executed and well-timed Scala-MOOC also helped a great deal. - Odersky's fame and track-record helped too. None of those might have driven your Scala adoption (or mine), but they might have helped others to shift their dev towards Scala.
- airless_bar 11y agoYou realize that all of that (except the last point) happened after Scala got traction?
- mafribe 11y agoThat depends on what you mean by tracking. Typesafe was founded in 2011. Scala really took off around 2013 in my entirely unscientific observation.