4 ms·

I tend to agree most of the post apart from "1. I think Clojure is much simpler". I am not saying that Scala is simpler, just that its a matter of preference.

by prog 16y ago

I tend to agree most of the post apart from "1. I think Clojure is much simpler". I am not saying that Scala is simpler, just that its a matter of preference. After spending a fair amount of time using both languages (5-6 months each) IMO opinion it boiled down to what style is more suited for a specific project. dynamic + lispy or static + multi-paradigm. One feature of clojure that I did miss in my scala project was macros. The reason I picked scala for the project was that I wanted static typing for the project. Both languages are really neat and I would rather be using one of them instead of java.

francoisdevlin 16y ago
What prompted you to want static typing? What did it help you do better?
- prog 16y ago
  That particular project (simulation) required a lot of bit twiddling and working with data of various sizes 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit. So having the specific types nailed at compile time helped. Lack of unsigned data on the JVM was a pain though. Two other reasons I picked scala for that particular project was OO support and mutability. The problem fit OO better and performance was very important (I was anyway taking a bit of a hit choosing JVM over C), so with scala I had the option of for e.g. setting up a C like while loop with a counter rather than mapping a function. This was maybe 6-8 months back. Since then clojure has added neat concepts like transients[1] which allowing mutability in a controlled manner within a function. So thats worth a look. I just preferred to go for a multi-paradigm language rather than a semi-pure functional language as I wasn't sure how the project needs would evolve. What I would have really liked to do was use Python. I actually created an early prototype but the performance didn't meet the needs. I look forward to unladen-swallow :) Python did have some neat libs like struct[2] that would have worked. IMO the choice of static or dynamic should be decided by the problem at hand. I feel dynamic tends to work for majority of projects so thats what I usually prefer but sometimes static works best. [1] http://clojure.org/transients http://clojure.org/transients [2] http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/struct.html#module-struct http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/struct.html#module-struc...
hga 16y ago
Hmmm ... while mainline Lisp has traditionally been multi-paradigm I don't think you can say that of Clojure, which I think is much closer to being purely functional than a lot of other "functional" languages (but I could well be wrong, I don't really know the others). Clojure at least gives you some absolute guarantees about the immutability of its core data structures. "Much simpler" could well be an exaggeration. I just multiplied my knowledge of Scala by N by looking at its Wikipedia entry and I didn't get that impression. To the extent you can avoid OO while writing idiomatic Scala there's no need for the latter to introduce a lot of accidental complexity. (I've not explored Scala not because of anything having to do with it but because I'm very dedicated to Lisp.)
swannodette 16y ago
> "1. I think Clojure is much simpler" Scala is now 170,000+ lines of code. Clojure on the other hand is about ~30,000 lines of Java and 4,000 lines of Clojure. Scala brings a very sophisticated and robust type system. This has it's benefits but it also seems to inject a considerable amount of of complexity. I haven't experienced Scala's type system so I won't venture further than that. If somebody asked me where the complexity was in Clojure I would answer thus: 1. Understanding the roles of the various concurrency primitives 2. Making idiomatic Clojure fast w/o resorting to mutable Java 3. Macros (if you haven't written them before) Besides these three areas, Clojure is mind-blowingly and beautifully simple. I've found it to be as "conceptually" small as C or JavaScript while adding an incredible amount of expressive power. EDIT: I have no actual opinion about Scala. It looks like great technology.

by prog 16y ago

francoisdevlin 16y ago

What prompted you to want static typing? What did it help you do better?

prog 16y ago
That particular project (simulation) required a lot of bit twiddling and working with data of various sizes 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit. So having the specific types nailed at compile time helped. Lack of unsigned data on the JVM was a pain though. Two other reasons I picked scala for that particular project was OO support and mutability. The problem fit OO better and performance was very important (I was anyway taking a bit of a hit choosing JVM over C), so with scala I had the option of for e.g. setting up a C like while loop with a counter rather than mapping a function. This was maybe 6-8 months back. Since then clojure has added neat concepts like transients[1] which allowing mutability in a controlled manner within a function. So thats worth a look. I just preferred to go for a multi-paradigm language rather than a semi-pure functional language as I wasn't sure how the project needs would evolve. What I would have really liked to do was use Python. I actually created an early prototype but the performance didn't meet the needs. I look forward to unladen-swallow :) Python did have some neat libs like struct[2] that would have worked. IMO the choice of static or dynamic should be decided by the problem at hand. I feel dynamic tends to work for majority of projects so thats what I usually prefer but sometimes static works best. [1] http://clojure.org/transients http://clojure.org/transients [2] http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/struct.html#module-struct http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/struct.html#module-struc...

hga 16y ago

Hmmm ... while mainline Lisp has traditionally been multi-paradigm I don't think you can say that of Clojure, which I think is much closer to being purely functional than a lot of other "functional" languages (but I could well be wrong, I don't really know the others). Clojure at least gives you some absolute guarantees about the immutability of its core data structures. "Much simpler" could well be an exaggeration. I just multiplied my knowledge of Scala by N by looking at its Wikipedia entry and I didn't get that impression. To the extent you can avoid OO while writing idiomatic Scala there's no need for the latter to introduce a lot of accidental complexity. (I've not explored Scala not because of anything having to do with it but because I'm very dedicated to Lisp.)

swannodette 16y ago

> "1. I think Clojure is much simpler" Scala is now 170,000+ lines of code. Clojure on the other hand is about ~30,000 lines of Java and 4,000 lines of Clojure. Scala brings a very sophisticated and robust type system. This has it's benefits but it also seems to inject a considerable amount of of complexity. I haven't experienced Scala's type system so I won't venture further than that. If somebody asked me where the complexity was in Clojure I would answer thus: 1. Understanding the roles of the various concurrency primitives 2. Making idiomatic Clojure fast w/o resorting to mutable Java 3. Macros (if you haven't written them before) Besides these three areas, Clojure is mind-blowingly and beautifully simple. I've found it to be as "conceptually" small as C or JavaScript while adding an incredible amount of expressive power. EDIT: I have no actual opinion about Scala. It looks like great technology.