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I think that was the idea of Scala — to provide all of the modern language features in one language so that you don't have to decide between, say, Java librarie

I think that was the idea of Scala — to provide all of the modern language features in one language so that you don't have to decide between, say, Java libraries or higher-kinded types or actors. You get them all, you can mix and match. This is powerful because it gives a good basis to test any new feature on a substrate that already has all the existing ones. I think this lack of an arbitrary feature boundary makes it a useful research language. However, for the same reason, I imagine it's not so good in production — it's like Perl with "more than one way to do it," but now you need a PhD [1] to understand several of the myriad ways of doing things. [1] You don't need a PhD, but I'm guessing only a very small proportion of working programmers know what, e.g. a higher-kinded type is.

meastham 16y ago
That's a good way to describe it. As I was reading the book there were lots of moments where a particular feature seemed very clever and elegant and fun to use, but as I kept reading and the number of features started to pile up it started to look like something that would be very difficult to use in most practical settings. Indeed, when we were doing show-and-tell sessions with out little Scala projects, even though we had all been reading the book, we'd frequently have to ask the presenter what exactly some piece of syntactic sugar meant or to remind us of the precise semantics of some feature. It just never really seemed to all "click" together like other languages have for me in the past. That, and the compiler is dog-slow. I'm working with a group that is looking at using Scala as a basis for an embedded DSL for hardware construction right now, and the compile times are one of the biggest things that is steering us away. Not sure what the deal is there.
- gtani 16y ago
  random comments: There are a lot of scala books for different target audiences, 19 in various languages, (the 3 Manning Meaps are half-done chapter wise, : http://www.scala-lang.org/node/959 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/959 http://manning.com/raychaudhuri http://manning.com/raychaudhuri http://manning.com/suereth http://manning.com/suereth ---------------- Re: compiler speed: backgrounders on type inference, http://scala-programming-language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Partial-type-inference-td2007311.html http://scala-programming-language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Part... http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/papers/#Types http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/papers/#Types http://staticallytyped.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/solution-in-scala-to-the-previous-post/ http://staticallytyped.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/solution-in-... (see comments) -------------- the type checker: http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/browser/scala/trunk/src/compiler/scala/tools/nsc/typechecker/TypeDiagnostics.scala http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/browser/scala/trunk/src/co... and specialization in 2.8: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4256273/why-did-scalas-library-double-its-size-and-will-that-happen-again http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4256273/why-did-scalas-li... As an aside, you can't really declare anything a problem in scala til you've asked #scala freenode IRC, the mailing lists and/or stackoverflow and gotten their takes on your issue.
  - gtani 16y ago
    and shameless self-promotion, cause somebody asked about 2.9 http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/eb0rd/programming_in_scala28_2nd_edition_odersky_spoon/c16qzfv http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/eb0rd/programming_in_...

meastham 16y ago

That's a good way to describe it. As I was reading the book there were lots of moments where a particular feature seemed very clever and elegant and fun to use, but as I kept reading and the number of features started to pile up it started to look like something that would be very difficult to use in most practical settings. Indeed, when we were doing show-and-tell sessions with out little Scala projects, even though we had all been reading the book, we'd frequently have to ask the presenter what exactly some piece of syntactic sugar meant or to remind us of the precise semantics of some feature. It just never really seemed to all "click" together like other languages have for me in the past. That, and the compiler is dog-slow. I'm working with a group that is looking at using Scala as a basis for an embedded DSL for hardware construction right now, and the compile times are one of the biggest things that is steering us away. Not sure what the deal is there.

gtani 16y ago
random comments: There are a lot of scala books for different target audiences, 19 in various languages, (the 3 Manning Meaps are half-done chapter wise, : http://www.scala-lang.org/node/959 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/959 http://manning.com/raychaudhuri http://manning.com/raychaudhuri http://manning.com/suereth http://manning.com/suereth ---------------- Re: compiler speed: backgrounders on type inference, http://scala-programming-language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Partial-type-inference-td2007311.html http://scala-programming-language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Part... http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/papers/#Types http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/papers/#Types http://staticallytyped.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/solution-in-scala-to-the-previous-post/ http://staticallytyped.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/solution-in-... (see comments) -------------- the type checker: http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/browser/scala/trunk/src/compiler/scala/tools/nsc/typechecker/TypeDiagnostics.scala http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/browser/scala/trunk/src/co... and specialization in 2.8: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4256273/why-did-scalas-library-double-its-size-and-will-that-happen-again http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4256273/why-did-scalas-li... As an aside, you can't really declare anything a problem in scala til you've asked #scala freenode IRC, the mailing lists and/or stackoverflow and gotten their takes on your issue.
- gtani 16y ago
  and shameless self-promotion, cause somebody asked about 2.9 http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/eb0rd/programming_in_scala28_2nd_edition_odersky_spoon/c16qzfv http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/eb0rd/programming_in_...