3 ms·

When these discussions come up, I always remember a comment from a guy (sorry, can't remember his name) in the scala google groups. People were arguing that the

by mping 8y ago

When these discussions come up, I always remember a comment from a guy (sorry, can't remember his name) in the scala google groups. People were arguing that the scala compiler was too complicated and someone wanted to write a new language. This guys says he can pop up a Hindley-Millner type-inference lang in a couple of weeks, and someone notes that the adoption wouldn't be as nearly as high as with scala. The guys says he just wants a language where he and his team can be productive. This. 1000x this. Ranters gonna rant, haters gonna hate, but productive people will use whatever floats their boat. For me it's clojure lately. I don't need to convince anyone that 'X' is better than 'Y'. If a new paradigm comes along (actors) that proves valuable, I hope that my language can assimilate it (quasar/pulsar). Otherwise I'm happy. Besides, in today's startup economy, we're lucky if a company lasts months, nevermind about decades.

verinus 8y ago
imho it's not so simple. As a manager I would not want such orchids as we call em in German. What if this "rock star" leaves the team? What if we want to bring in more team members? Who pays for the development of these dev tools? After all we are not payed to write code but to solve problems- a fact devs like to forget. Do they really pay for themselves in therms of savings as suggested by the dev? I don't claim that this questions were not raised and answered, but that from a strategic point of view not the coolest and shiniest toys and concepts may make the most sense.
lmm 8y ago
> The guys says he just wants a language where he and his team can be productive. This. 1000x this. Ranters gonna rant, haters gonna hate, but productive people will use whatever floats their boat. For me it's clojure lately. I don't need to convince anyone that 'X' is better than 'Y'. If a new paradigm comes along (actors) that proves valuable, I hope that my language can assimilate it (quasar/pulsar). Otherwise I'm happy. To "just" be productive you need a huge library/tool ecosystem that, realistically, only a handful of languages are ever going to have at any point in time. Particularly if you want your language to make use of the possibilities that GUIs offer. I love Scala and find its IDE support to be one of its great strengths, but even so it's noticeably behind what you get in Java or C#. And that's a top-20 language.
- mping 8y ago
  I wasn't talking about any particular language. Scala is an interesting example, you have some good software written in it (Kafka, Scalding, Finagle) even with not-so-good IDEs. As for clojure, I have yet to find an environment as good as emacs+cider+nrepl.
  - lmm 8y ago
    > Scala is an interesting example, you have some good software written in it (Kafka, Scalding, Finagle) even with not-so-good IDEs. My point is quite the opposite: its IDEs are a lot better than you'll find for many languages. On paper Haskell should be a better language than Scala, but you don't see anything comparable to your examples, and I think the tool situation has a lot to do with that. So popularity ends up being very important.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
> Ranters gonna rant, haters gonna hate, but productive people will use whatever floats their boat. I agree in general, but it's not just whatever floats their boat. Every real project has its yak-shaving aspects. Productive people pick languages (plus libraries and ecosystems) that will handle for them as much of the yak-shaving as possible, leaving them free to work on the problem they're actually trying to solve.

by mping 8y ago

verinus 8y ago

imho it's not so simple. As a manager I would not want such orchids as we call em in German. What if this "rock star" leaves the team? What if we want to bring in more team members? Who pays for the development of these dev tools? After all we are not payed to write code but to solve problems- a fact devs like to forget. Do they really pay for themselves in therms of savings as suggested by the dev? I don't claim that this questions were not raised and answered, but that from a strategic point of view not the coolest and shiniest toys and concepts may make the most sense.

lmm 8y ago

> The guys says he just wants a language where he and his team can be productive. This. 1000x this. Ranters gonna rant, haters gonna hate, but productive people will use whatever floats their boat. For me it's clojure lately. I don't need to convince anyone that 'X' is better than 'Y'. If a new paradigm comes along (actors) that proves valuable, I hope that my language can assimilate it (quasar/pulsar). Otherwise I'm happy. To "just" be productive you need a huge library/tool ecosystem that, realistically, only a handful of languages are ever going to have at any point in time. Particularly if you want your language to make use of the possibilities that GUIs offer. I love Scala and find its IDE support to be one of its great strengths, but even so it's noticeably behind what you get in Java or C#. And that's a top-20 language.

mping 8y ago
I wasn't talking about any particular language. Scala is an interesting example, you have some good software written in it (Kafka, Scalding, Finagle) even with not-so-good IDEs. As for clojure, I have yet to find an environment as good as emacs+cider+nrepl.
- lmm 8y ago
  > Scala is an interesting example, you have some good software written in it (Kafka, Scalding, Finagle) even with not-so-good IDEs. My point is quite the opposite: its IDEs are a lot better than you'll find for many languages. On paper Haskell should be a better language than Scala, but you don't see anything comparable to your examples, and I think the tool situation has a lot to do with that. So popularity ends up being very important.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

> Ranters gonna rant, haters gonna hate, but productive people will use whatever floats their boat. I agree in general, but it's not just whatever floats their boat. Every real project has its yak-shaving aspects. Productive people pick languages (plus libraries and ecosystems) that will handle for them as much of the yak-shaving as possible, leaving them free to work on the problem they're actually trying to solve.