5 ms·

It is also about tooling and libraries. I find Scala ecosystem to be behind Java ecosystem couple of years (SBT versus Maven/Ant/Gradle, collection libraries...

It is also about tooling and libraries. I find Scala ecosystem to be behind Java ecosystem couple of years (SBT versus Maven/Ant/Gradle, collection libraries...). And Kotlin makes this debate irrelevant anyway.

WaxProlix 10y ago
That's completely not true because Kotlin has something near zero adoption. I have a Kotlin fanatic coworker so I know all about the manifold benefits of Kotlin -- it sounds awesome. Never had a project OK'd to use it, probably never will. They obviously need a PR and marketing department; otherwise they end up being the CouchDB to XYZ's Mongo.
- jankotek 10y ago
  I usually hava Scala/Java debate before new project (or refactoring) is started. And here is Kotlin relevant. Kotlin is bundled with Intellij Idea. And Kotlin has smaller adoption barrier.
  - WaxProlix 10y ago
    If you work with other teams, especially onprem or offshore teams, they use netbeans or some other piece of shit IDE. It's just a fact. They know J7, can be convinced to try J8, once read a blog that mentioned Scala, and don't know what the fuck Kotlin is.
    - curun1r 10y ago
      On the other hand, if you decide to use Kotlin, you'll post a job listing, get only a handful of candidates, and nearly all of them will be outstanding and the type of curious, driven engineer that you'd normally have to sift through a mountain of dime-a-dozen, uninspired Java hacks to find. It's not until you've had to hire Java devs that the mystery of why so many people feel the need to ask a question as facile as FizzBuzz becomes clear.
  - pkolaczk 10y ago
    Scala is an official Intellij plugin as well. Installing it takes two clicks.
- zem 10y ago
  android development could well be kotlin's killer app. i'm seeing a lot more buzz about it there than anywhere else, especially since it promises a very low overhead over plain java, as contrasted with clojure and scala.
- sandGorgon 10y ago
  Kotlin has a much bigger adoption than scala actually - on Android. Literally everyone I know is moving Android dev to Kotlin. Android is arguably Kotlin's killer app and it is seriously good. The PR for Kotlin is /r/androiddev ;) OTOH Scala does not have a killer app.
  - tutanchamun 10y ago
    Never heard/read of Spark, Kafka etc.?
    - sandGorgon 10y ago
      usage of spark/kafka is primarily in other languages than scala. Spark and Kafka itself are implemented in scala no doubt. Most spark projects that I have worked on have been in pure java or pyspark. And kafka has been .. well, everything from python to php to ruby.
- afastow 10y ago
  This is hyperbole, Kotlin has fine adoption considering it only went 1.0 a year ago. Exactly how many times could you have tried and been denied the ability to use it within a year? Spring is adding dedicated Kotlin support in 5.0 which is likely to give it a huge amount of credibility and make companies running on Spring more comfortable with adopting it.
misja111 10y ago
That's a strange point to make about Scala. First of all you can choose if you build your Scala project with SBT, Maven or Gradle. Actually I know quite a few people who switched from SBT to Gradle. And the collection libraries is where Scala shines comparing to Java. Handling collections in Scala is just so much easier and more fun than in Java. Please try it out if you haven't done it yet.
- jankotek 10y ago
  If you use Gradle with Scala, you are using it as 'better Java' (point from article. I worked with Scala collections for 9 years, last 5 years I implement collections for living ;-) Scala collections are behind in implementation. JSR166 (java.util.concurrent) made large performance progress in Java 8 and 9. It was never back ported to Scala. Nothing like `ConcurrentNavigableMap` is in Scala. Or Set with weakly referenced keys?
saosebastiao 10y ago
A few years? I feel it is behind by a decade or more. IDEs, build systems, debuggers, profilers, linters, all suck as bad as they could possibly suck. But that hasn't stopped people from writing amazing software in it, which to me says a lot about the power of the language.

WaxProlix 10y ago

That's completely not true because Kotlin has something near zero adoption. I have a Kotlin fanatic coworker so I know all about the manifold benefits of Kotlin -- it sounds awesome. Never had a project OK'd to use it, probably never will. They obviously need a PR and marketing department; otherwise they end up being the CouchDB to XYZ's Mongo.

jankotek 10y ago
I usually hava Scala/Java debate before new project (or refactoring) is started. And here is Kotlin relevant. Kotlin is bundled with Intellij Idea. And Kotlin has smaller adoption barrier.
- WaxProlix 10y ago
  If you work with other teams, especially onprem or offshore teams, they use netbeans or some other piece of shit IDE. It's just a fact. They know J7, can be convinced to try J8, once read a blog that mentioned Scala, and don't know what the fuck Kotlin is.
  - curun1r 10y ago
    On the other hand, if you decide to use Kotlin, you'll post a job listing, get only a handful of candidates, and nearly all of them will be outstanding and the type of curious, driven engineer that you'd normally have to sift through a mountain of dime-a-dozen, uninspired Java hacks to find. It's not until you've had to hire Java devs that the mystery of why so many people feel the need to ask a question as facile as FizzBuzz becomes clear.
- pkolaczk 10y ago
  Scala is an official Intellij plugin as well. Installing it takes two clicks.
zem 10y ago
android development could well be kotlin's killer app. i'm seeing a lot more buzz about it there than anywhere else, especially since it promises a very low overhead over plain java, as contrasted with clojure and scala.
sandGorgon 10y ago
Kotlin has a much bigger adoption than scala actually - on Android. Literally everyone I know is moving Android dev to Kotlin. Android is arguably Kotlin's killer app and it is seriously good. The PR for Kotlin is /r/androiddev ;) OTOH Scala does not have a killer app.
- tutanchamun 10y ago
  Never heard/read of Spark, Kafka etc.?
  - sandGorgon 10y ago
    usage of spark/kafka is primarily in other languages than scala. Spark and Kafka itself are implemented in scala no doubt. Most spark projects that I have worked on have been in pure java or pyspark. And kafka has been .. well, everything from python to php to ruby.
afastow 10y ago
This is hyperbole, Kotlin has fine adoption considering it only went 1.0 a year ago. Exactly how many times could you have tried and been denied the ability to use it within a year? Spring is adding dedicated Kotlin support in 5.0 which is likely to give it a huge amount of credibility and make companies running on Spring more comfortable with adopting it.

misja111 10y ago

That's a strange point to make about Scala. First of all you can choose if you build your Scala project with SBT, Maven or Gradle. Actually I know quite a few people who switched from SBT to Gradle. And the collection libraries is where Scala shines comparing to Java. Handling collections in Scala is just so much easier and more fun than in Java. Please try it out if you haven't done it yet.

jankotek 10y ago
If you use Gradle with Scala, you are using it as 'better Java' (point from article. I worked with Scala collections for 9 years, last 5 years I implement collections for living ;-) Scala collections are behind in implementation. JSR166 (java.util.concurrent) made large performance progress in Java 8 and 9. It was never back ported to Scala. Nothing like `ConcurrentNavigableMap` is in Scala. Or Set with weakly referenced keys?

saosebastiao 10y ago

A few years? I feel it is behind by a decade or more. IDEs, build systems, debuggers, profilers, linters, all suck as bad as they could possibly suck. But that hasn't stopped people from writing amazing software in it, which to me says a lot about the power of the language.