6 ms·

To expand on this suggestion: Scala isn't big on purity (AFAIK the language has no concept of pure functions out of the box) but it is big on immutable data typ

by wtracy 10y ago

To expand on this suggestion: Scala isn't big on purity (AFAIK the language has no concept of pure functions out of the box) but it is big on immutable data types, and mostly-pure functions arise naturally when you're working with immutable types. Immutable types happen to be something that is familiar and comfortable to Java developers. I would therefore expect to meet a lot less resistance to "syntactic sugar and immutable classes" than "functional programming with pure functions" even if the end result is 80 percent the same.

roflc0ptic 10y ago
This was the compromise our team made. Our team was having a bad time dealing with Spring. Our lead dev is a functional buff who really likes Haskell, and got us all hype about trying something new. We picked scala in lieu of Haskell because the learning curve with Haskell was a much harder sell. We avoid mutable data types unless there's a compelling reason (interop with Java libraries, for example), and most of our functions are implicitly pure. ScalaZ might have some purity constraint, idk. 5 months in with Scala and it has been a wonderful experience. Now I just have to convince our front end dev to switch over to Scala.js...
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  We tried the same thing, but it did not go well at all. We picked scala because people should be able to learn it easier and more gradually. But we found as people learned FP using scala, they realized how much scala held them back. We ended up redoing a PHP project in scala, then as it was 80% done redoing it again in haskell. And then from there out using haskell for everything.
  - roflc0ptic 10y ago
    Do you have any specific examples of how scala would hold y'all back in relation to haskell? I actually have trouble imagining how one could justify, in a business, scrapping an 80% complete rewrite to rewrite it again in a different language. I wonder what would be so compelling.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      Scala is an OO language with FP tacked on, so it basically defaults to "make everything a pain". It was easy to justify rewriting it again because it only took two weeks to do it. A re-write is much faster than initially writing it, you're just copying yourself.
      - premium-concern 10y ago
        I wonder why Haskell people feel so hurt about Scala... It's much closer to Haskell's capabilities than pretty much any other functional language. It has better type classes, the compiler just got type inference for partially applied type constructors, it supports programming with dependent types and implicit parameters allow you to let the compiler prove almost arbitrary things. If your definition of FP means "purity", you pretty much discarded all languages traditionally considered to be functional. There is nothing wrong with liking Haskell more than Scala, but I think your claims are not very well-founded.
        kmiroslav 10y ago
        > It has better type classes Haskell and Scala win and lose on different criteria but for type classes, I find Haskell's syntax and semantics infinitely more elegant, more terse and more flexible than Scala's. Defining type classes in Scala is a cacophony of syntax boiler plate riddled with implicits and brackets. Haskell is much more elegant in that area.
        premium-concern 10y ago
        Scala's typeclasses are first-class values and they actually work as advertised. Haskell's type classes are a mess because Haskell-the-spec (anti-modular, coherent) and Haskell-the-language (incoherent, "modular") work completely different and nobody cares and there us no real fix because both options suck, as soon as your project consists of more than one module. It's the reason why no language after Haskell does type classes the Haskell way, and all of them do it similar to Scala's approach. Could Scala have more syntax sugar? Sure! But people are more focused on getting them right first, before adding additional syntax.

by wtracy 10y ago

roflc0ptic 10y ago

This was the compromise our team made. Our team was having a bad time dealing with Spring. Our lead dev is a functional buff who really likes Haskell, and got us all hype about trying something new. We picked scala in lieu of Haskell because the learning curve with Haskell was a much harder sell. We avoid mutable data types unless there's a compelling reason (interop with Java libraries, for example), and most of our functions are implicitly pure. ScalaZ might have some purity constraint, idk. 5 months in with Scala and it has been a wonderful experience. Now I just have to convince our front end dev to switch over to Scala.js...

MustardTiger 10y ago
We tried the same thing, but it did not go well at all. We picked scala because people should be able to learn it easier and more gradually. But we found as people learned FP using scala, they realized how much scala held them back. We ended up redoing a PHP project in scala, then as it was 80% done redoing it again in haskell. And then from there out using haskell for everything.
- roflc0ptic 10y ago
  Do you have any specific examples of how scala would hold y'all back in relation to haskell? I actually have trouble imagining how one could justify, in a business, scrapping an 80% complete rewrite to rewrite it again in a different language. I wonder what would be so compelling.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    Scala is an OO language with FP tacked on, so it basically defaults to "make everything a pain". It was easy to justify rewriting it again because it only took two weeks to do it. A re-write is much faster than initially writing it, you're just copying yourself.
    - premium-concern 10y ago
      I wonder why Haskell people feel so hurt about Scala... It's much closer to Haskell's capabilities than pretty much any other functional language. It has better type classes, the compiler just got type inference for partially applied type constructors, it supports programming with dependent types and implicit parameters allow you to let the compiler prove almost arbitrary things. If your definition of FP means "purity", you pretty much discarded all languages traditionally considered to be functional. There is nothing wrong with liking Haskell more than Scala, but I think your claims are not very well-founded.
      - kmiroslav 10y ago
        > It has better type classes Haskell and Scala win and lose on different criteria but for type classes, I find Haskell's syntax and semantics infinitely more elegant, more terse and more flexible than Scala's. Defining type classes in Scala is a cacophony of syntax boiler plate riddled with implicits and brackets. Haskell is much more elegant in that area.
        premium-concern 10y ago
        Scala's typeclasses are first-class values and they actually work as advertised. Haskell's type classes are a mess because Haskell-the-spec (anti-modular, coherent) and Haskell-the-language (incoherent, "modular") work completely different and nobody cares and there us no real fix because both options suck, as soon as your project consists of more than one module. It's the reason why no language after Haskell does type classes the Haskell way, and all of them do it similar to Scala's approach. Could Scala have more syntax sugar? Sure! But people are more focused on getting them right first, before adding additional syntax.