4 ms·

Quite 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,

• lmm 11y ago
  I 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 ago
    Scala'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 ago
      You realize that all of that (except the last point) happened after Scala got traction?
      • mafribe 11y ago
        That depends on what you mean by tracking. Typesafe was founded in 2011. Scala really took off around 2013 in my entirely unscientific observation.