4 ms·

Rust should then get 6 stars judging from unparalleled excitement every news about it brings here. Rightfully so in my opinion. By the way, it's "Clojure", not

Rust should then get 6 stars judging from unparalleled excitement every news about it brings here. Rightfully so in my opinion. By the way, it's "Clojure", not "Closure" and what happened to Scala?

agentgt 10y ago
I have actually wondered that myself (Scala). I was so excited about Scala years ago (2006). One of my TAs from college was working on the language as well. It finally looked like an OCaml for the masses. Over time my excitement changed. I assume others may share my thoughts hence the less excitement: * It is on the JVM and there are lots of languages on the JVM competing with Java. * While the fusion OOP + FP fusion is interesting I have grown wary of kitchen sink languages. There are so many ways people write Scala. Scala from one project looks vastly different. * The endless DSLs * Java 8 is often good enough. Particularly for interop and community support. * Every time I have to add Scala to a Java project I'm thinking here comes 9MB jar that some classpath scanning thing is going to take its sweet time on (Spring, Servlet 3.0, etc). But I think most of the reason is Rust has filled that hard core typers niche with the added novelty of unique memory management and competing with other LLVM languages instead of JVM languages. Scala has become "old" like Java and OCaml :) .
- premium-concern 10y ago
  I kind of wonder how these points are true today vs. 10 years ago ... * It also compiles to Scala.js (it's actually the independent best compile-to-JS language out there in terms of libraries, tooling and IDE support). Support for compiling directly to native is coming around nicely. * Scala is quite far away from the kitchen sink, and many of the questionable parts have been deprecated and/or removed. * I have never seen much DSLs while writing Scala. Sure, it's probably quite nice, but I have rarely seen endless DSLs in practice. * The jar is around 4MB (2.12) and when writing idiomatic Scala (~ not Spring/Servlet) there shouldn't be any kind of reflection or classpath scanning happening.
  - agentgt 10y ago
    Hmm I guess they have been actively shrinking the jar (it isn't 4 megs but ~5.5... still a massive improvement [1]). As far as kitchen sink I'm still not sure what idiomatic Scala is especially with the likes of Scalaz. Maybe modern Scala is finally abandoning the OOP fusion. Of course my biggest reason of not liking Scala is completely arbitrary and almost illogical (of course most reasons to (dis)favor things are arbitrary). If I write in an FP language I hate using curly braces. I prefer Haskell, OCaml, and even Lisp syntax for FP. For some reason curly braces makes me think hmm imperative shit. Not to mention Scala has lots of scoping and closure use so you see lots of curly braces. And that brings me to another point. Scala code isn't really that much more compact (lines of code or even compressed size) to Java 8 (compared to Haskell or OCaml). [1]: https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-library https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-libr...
    - premium-concern 10y ago
      Maven Central says it's around 4.4MB (with some things still pending to be dropped before the release of the final version)[1]. [1] https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-library/2.12.0-M5 https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-libr... I would disagree with the comment on verbosity compared to Java 8/Haskell/Ocaml. Most of the things I do regularly in Scala would require a magnitude of more code. Ocaml doesn't even have higher-kinded types or implicits, so I don't think it can win much on that front (except of saving a line where Scala's curly brace might be). With Haskell it really depends. There are certainly ways to write much more succinct code, but what I see in practice is that it's not that much different from Scala. Haskell has it's own unsolved issues though: broken typeclasses, lacking module system, poor tooling, and a weekly-changing, terrible dependency management.
      - agentgt 10y ago
        I'm not sure I like implicits as for HKT... "with great power comes...". HKTs are great for a generic library writer (aka standard library) but I think the over abstract nature ends up confusing your average developer. You basically have your type aficionados obfuscating the codebase for developers who can barely handle generics. It is sort of analogous to using massive reflection / meta-programming in scripting language (albeit far more safe). Being extremely implicit and abstract comes with a cognitive load. OCaml's Functors (ie super strict and explicit) on the other hand can get massively repetitive. I vaguely remember HKTs being expensive compile time. Is that still the case?
- lmm 10y ago
  I think Scala's still growing - I think OCaml is too. I'm worried that between Dotty and the focus on Java 8 support in 2.12, we've gone far too long without improvements to Scala syntax, or indeed a new release at all. Having written Scala professionally full-time for 4+ years I couldn't stand to go back to a language without higher-kinded types, which pretty much means I'm stuck on Scala or Haskell.

Rust should then get 6 stars judging from unparalleled excitement every news about it brings here. Rightfully so in my opinion. By the way, it's "Clojure", not "Closure" and what happened to Scala?

agentgt 10y ago

I have actually wondered that myself (Scala). I was so excited about Scala years ago (2006). One of my TAs from college was working on the language as well. It finally looked like an OCaml for the masses. Over time my excitement changed. I assume others may share my thoughts hence the less excitement: * It is on the JVM and there are lots of languages on the JVM competing with Java. * While the fusion OOP + FP fusion is interesting I have grown wary of kitchen sink languages. There are so many ways people write Scala. Scala from one project looks vastly different. * The endless DSLs * Java 8 is often good enough. Particularly for interop and community support. * Every time I have to add Scala to a Java project I'm thinking here comes 9MB jar that some classpath scanning thing is going to take its sweet time on (Spring, Servlet 3.0, etc). But I think most of the reason is Rust has filled that hard core typers niche with the added novelty of unique memory management and competing with other LLVM languages instead of JVM languages. Scala has become "old" like Java and OCaml :) .

premium-concern 10y ago
I kind of wonder how these points are true today vs. 10 years ago ... * It also compiles to Scala.js (it's actually the independent best compile-to-JS language out there in terms of libraries, tooling and IDE support). Support for compiling directly to native is coming around nicely. * Scala is quite far away from the kitchen sink, and many of the questionable parts have been deprecated and/or removed. * I have never seen much DSLs while writing Scala. Sure, it's probably quite nice, but I have rarely seen endless DSLs in practice. * The jar is around 4MB (2.12) and when writing idiomatic Scala (~ not Spring/Servlet) there shouldn't be any kind of reflection or classpath scanning happening.
- agentgt 10y ago
  Hmm I guess they have been actively shrinking the jar (it isn't 4 megs but ~5.5... still a massive improvement [1]). As far as kitchen sink I'm still not sure what idiomatic Scala is especially with the likes of Scalaz. Maybe modern Scala is finally abandoning the OOP fusion. Of course my biggest reason of not liking Scala is completely arbitrary and almost illogical (of course most reasons to (dis)favor things are arbitrary). If I write in an FP language I hate using curly braces. I prefer Haskell, OCaml, and even Lisp syntax for FP. For some reason curly braces makes me think hmm imperative shit. Not to mention Scala has lots of scoping and closure use so you see lots of curly braces. And that brings me to another point. Scala code isn't really that much more compact (lines of code or even compressed size) to Java 8 (compared to Haskell or OCaml). [1]: https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-library https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-libr...
  - premium-concern 10y ago
    Maven Central says it's around 4.4MB (with some things still pending to be dropped before the release of the final version)[1]. [1] https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-library/2.12.0-M5 https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-libr... I would disagree with the comment on verbosity compared to Java 8/Haskell/Ocaml. Most of the things I do regularly in Scala would require a magnitude of more code. Ocaml doesn't even have higher-kinded types or implicits, so I don't think it can win much on that front (except of saving a line where Scala's curly brace might be). With Haskell it really depends. There are certainly ways to write much more succinct code, but what I see in practice is that it's not that much different from Scala. Haskell has it's own unsolved issues though: broken typeclasses, lacking module system, poor tooling, and a weekly-changing, terrible dependency management.
    - agentgt 10y ago
      I'm not sure I like implicits as for HKT... "with great power comes...". HKTs are great for a generic library writer (aka standard library) but I think the over abstract nature ends up confusing your average developer. You basically have your type aficionados obfuscating the codebase for developers who can barely handle generics. It is sort of analogous to using massive reflection / meta-programming in scripting language (albeit far more safe). Being extremely implicit and abstract comes with a cognitive load. OCaml's Functors (ie super strict and explicit) on the other hand can get massively repetitive. I vaguely remember HKTs being expensive compile time. Is that still the case?
lmm 10y ago
I think Scala's still growing - I think OCaml is too. I'm worried that between Dotty and the focus on Java 8 support in 2.12, we've gone far too long without improvements to Scala syntax, or indeed a new release at all. Having written Scala professionally full-time for 4+ years I couldn't stand to go back to a language without higher-kinded types, which pretty much means I'm stuck on Scala or Haskell.