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Yeah, I don't think Scala 3 changes anything with regards to perception and/or adoption of Scala. That ship has pretty much sailed. Martin Odersky seems like

Yeah, I don't think Scala 3 changes anything with regards to perception and/or adoption of Scala. That ship has pretty much sailed. Martin Odersky seems like a really good language designer. I took a look at the Scala 3 languages features, and a more radical departure from historic Scala probably would have helped Scala.

lmm 9y ago
Three or four years ago the biggest criticism of Scala was that releases were breaking backwards compatibility too much. On this very thread you'll find people worrying that Scala 3 will create a Python 2/3-style endless awkward transition. At this stage it's a mature language with a big established ecosystem, it can't afford to break too radically. (Did you have specific breaking changes in mind? The most important changes I'd want to make to the language - having a syntax for guaranteed-safe equality comparison and guaranteed-safe pattern matching - could be done in a backwards compatible way, and the only other thing I can think that I'd like would be Idris-style totality checking which could also be backwards compatible.)
- Bizarro 9y ago
  I wouldn't have called it Scala 3. And if I had the big brain of Martin Odersky, 5 years ago I would've had started thinking about an intermediate step in programming productivity, correctness - instead of doing Doty. I don't follow Scala that much anymore, but it seems that it's mostly a reworking of the internal consistency of Scala from an implementation perspective. At least that was the gist of it I got from watching Odersky give a talk about it a couple years ago.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > 5 years ago I would've had started thinking about an intermediate step in programming productivity, correctness - instead of doing Doty. Wait what? In the last post you were complaining it was too close to existing scala, now you're saying it's too big a step? Again, what is the change you're actually advocating?
    - Bizarro 9y ago
      You misunderstand. The intermediate step in programming productivity has nothing to do with any particular language. I would have not done "Scala 3", but something else that implements "intermediate step up in programming productivity and correctness". Probably something a bit radical, but hey development is so stagnant when it comes to way we program, it would've been worth the risk. Hint, the stuff that Chris Granger was trying to accomplish.
      - lmm 9y ago
        I find Scala is the thing that's actually advancing programming productivity - even when it comes specifically to IDEs/HCI/visual programming - whereas I expected Granger's effort to fail as it did. So I'm very glad Odersky's continuing to focus on Scala; if anything I was worried that his efforts on Dotty were detracting from maintenance and improvement of Scala proper.
wpietri 9y ago
Could you (and perhaps others) say more about this? I was excited to read that key goals were simplification, clarification, and consolidation. But my exact worry is that they didn't go far enough. I liked the idea of Scala and took Odersky's course. But I built a few things in it and it was never not frustrating. What Bruce Eckels said resonates with me: "I’ve come to view Scala as a landscape of cliffs – you can start feeling pretty comfortable with the language and think that you have a reasonable grasp of it, then suddenly fall off a cliff that makes you realize that no, you still don’t get it." Then I watched this Paul Phillips talk, which convinced me that the problems were deep, not superficial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 My hope with Dotty, etc, was that they had learned a little humility and were pruning back enough to make it a decent developer experience. But I could well believe that it was impossible to do enough and still end up with something that could be fairly called Scala.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> a more radical departure from historic Scala probably would have helped Scala. Maybe. But high-risk. See Perl 6.

lmm 9y ago

Three or four years ago the biggest criticism of Scala was that releases were breaking backwards compatibility too much. On this very thread you'll find people worrying that Scala 3 will create a Python 2/3-style endless awkward transition. At this stage it's a mature language with a big established ecosystem, it can't afford to break too radically. (Did you have specific breaking changes in mind? The most important changes I'd want to make to the language - having a syntax for guaranteed-safe equality comparison and guaranteed-safe pattern matching - could be done in a backwards compatible way, and the only other thing I can think that I'd like would be Idris-style totality checking which could also be backwards compatible.)

Bizarro 9y ago
I wouldn't have called it Scala 3. And if I had the big brain of Martin Odersky, 5 years ago I would've had started thinking about an intermediate step in programming productivity, correctness - instead of doing Doty. I don't follow Scala that much anymore, but it seems that it's mostly a reworking of the internal consistency of Scala from an implementation perspective. At least that was the gist of it I got from watching Odersky give a talk about it a couple years ago.
- lmm 9y ago
  > 5 years ago I would've had started thinking about an intermediate step in programming productivity, correctness - instead of doing Doty. Wait what? In the last post you were complaining it was too close to existing scala, now you're saying it's too big a step? Again, what is the change you're actually advocating?
  - Bizarro 9y ago
    You misunderstand. The intermediate step in programming productivity has nothing to do with any particular language. I would have not done "Scala 3", but something else that implements "intermediate step up in programming productivity and correctness". Probably something a bit radical, but hey development is so stagnant when it comes to way we program, it would've been worth the risk. Hint, the stuff that Chris Granger was trying to accomplish.
    - lmm 9y ago
      I find Scala is the thing that's actually advancing programming productivity - even when it comes specifically to IDEs/HCI/visual programming - whereas I expected Granger's effort to fail as it did. So I'm very glad Odersky's continuing to focus on Scala; if anything I was worried that his efforts on Dotty were detracting from maintenance and improvement of Scala proper.

wpietri 9y ago

Could you (and perhaps others) say more about this? I was excited to read that key goals were simplification, clarification, and consolidation. But my exact worry is that they didn't go far enough. I liked the idea of Scala and took Odersky's course. But I built a few things in it and it was never not frustrating. What Bruce Eckels said resonates with me: "I’ve come to view Scala as a landscape of cliffs – you can start feeling pretty comfortable with the language and think that you have a reasonable grasp of it, then suddenly fall off a cliff that makes you realize that no, you still don’t get it." Then I watched this Paul Phillips talk, which convinced me that the problems were deep, not superficial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0 My hope with Dotty, etc, was that they had learned a little humility and were pruning back enough to make it a decent developer experience. But I could well believe that it was impossible to do enough and still end up with something that could be fairly called Scala.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> a more radical departure from historic Scala probably would have helped Scala. Maybe. But high-risk. See Perl 6.