7 ms·

Not a lot of progress in the last year.

pjmlp 7y ago
The hype is gone, now there are other languages on the spotlight. Longterm, languages that own platforms are always a safer bet. They only go away when the platform dies, while guest languages come and go. And best of all, you don't need to wait for supporting platform features, having additional idiomatic wrappers, more IDE plugins, debugging support, build tools, etc.
- joneholland 7y ago
  We are a scala shop as well, but more and more things are being built in Kotlin. I love scala but the lack of a future is downhearting.
  - mruts 7y ago
    I used to work at a Scala shop and to me, the future looks great. 2.13 is nice, and 3.0 should be very nice. The language is a joy to work with and insanely powerful. I wouldn’t say there’s a better practical language out there (OCaml could be in the future though).
  - solidsnack9000 7y ago
    What kinds of things are you guys doing in Kotlin? Anything server-side?
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Not sure how anyone can say Scala has no future when Scala 3 is around the corner: https://medium.com/@sinisalouc/whats-new-in-scala-3-28d9c11eec30 https://medium.com/@sinisalouc/whats-new-in-scala-3-28d9c11e...
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      I am not that much interested in what versioning scheme a language used and very curious about what is new in Scala that makes it a more attractive platform tomorrow than it is today. I just read that post and so far there is nothing really that interesting. Maybe it is just me.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I don't see a future with Kotlin either. Android has turned into Kotlin's platform. Outside Android I predict Kotlin will be feeling like Scala is nowadays. Too much dependent on JetBrains tooling, leaving other Java tools as 2nd class, trying to spread too wide with Kotlin/Native having specific memory semantics, sequences and co-routines are their own thing, distinct from JVM ones.
    - melling 7y ago
      Does anyone use Scala on Android? I’m sure it requires more resources than Kotlin but phone hardware has greatly improved in the last 5 years.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        I bet someone does, but good luck fighting all the missing tooling and SDK support.
- melling 7y ago
  Scala seems to be chugging along. Twitter still uses it heavily. I recently watched a few Scala Days 2019 videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHg8YCiyMVRRxb3mJT_0Mg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHg8YCiyMVRRxb3mJT_0Mg It seems to have a healthy community. 3.0 comes out next year. If you want a functional gateway drug, Scala appears to be the answer: https://typelevel.org/cats/ https://typelevel.org/cats/
  - threeseed 7y ago
    If you really want to see the future of Scala look at ZIO (http://zio.dev http://zio.dev) By far the most interesting library I've seen on any platform in decades. It handles the most complex concurrency issues with ease. In my current project is has meant an order of magnitude less code to write. And the way you explicitly have to list what your function returns under every situation e.g. success and error is a real improvement in how Java/Scala works e.g. https://zio.dev/docs/datatypes/datatypes_io https://zio.dev/docs/datatypes/datatypes_io And for web developer look at Slinky one of the nicest React implementations on any platform (https://slinky.dev https://slinky.dev)
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Heather Miller's recent talk at JuliaConf kind of pointed out a couple of issues.
- ibains 7y ago
  We're a scala shop, we get a functional language with features such as parser combinators (packrat parsers) - super useful for building DSLs. Functional-Relational-Mapping (for comprehensions) for SQL. We're able to get good web services with play, with easy to write asynchronous code. Plus all of it runs on robust JVM. We love it, we'd not change it for us, hype or no hype.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    >> super useful for building DSLs This is exactly the reason we do not use Scala anymore. Tired of learning new DSLs for every single problem.
    - ferzul 7y ago
      isn't the alternative to a dsl just constructing classes, giving them to each other, and using a bunch of stringy typed arguments?
      - StreamBright 7y ago
        >> just constructing classes I usually do not want to construct classes, it does not help me achieving what I want in my day to day duties. >> using a bunch of stringy typed arguments? I usually have all sorts of typed arguments.
- dionian 7y ago
  hard to have a safer bet than the JVM as your platform. not like changes like Jigsaw come around that often
- twblalock 7y ago
  I remember a lot of people saying "Now I don't need to learn Scala" after Java 8 came out. Java 8 took a lot of the wind out of Scala's sails not by being better, but by showing enough improvement that the benefits of learning Scala looked less attractive than before.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    That is part of it. Platform languages take slowly the best features of guest languages. Additionally, type inference, value classes and pattern matching might not be at Kotlin, Scala, Clojure level, but they are good enough for most devs without having to deal with all the extra stuff.

The hype is gone, now there are other languages on the spotlight. Longterm, languages that own platforms are always a safer bet. They only go away when the platform dies, while guest languages come and go. And best of all, you don't need to wait for supporting platform features, having additional idiomatic wrappers, more IDE plugins, debugging support, build tools, etc.

joneholland 7y ago
We are a scala shop as well, but more and more things are being built in Kotlin. I love scala but the lack of a future is downhearting.
- mruts 7y ago
  I used to work at a Scala shop and to me, the future looks great. 2.13 is nice, and 3.0 should be very nice. The language is a joy to work with and insanely powerful. I wouldn’t say there’s a better practical language out there (OCaml could be in the future though).
- solidsnack9000 7y ago
  What kinds of things are you guys doing in Kotlin? Anything server-side?
- threeseed 7y ago
  Not sure how anyone can say Scala has no future when Scala 3 is around the corner: https://medium.com/@sinisalouc/whats-new-in-scala-3-28d9c11eec30 https://medium.com/@sinisalouc/whats-new-in-scala-3-28d9c11e...
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    I am not that much interested in what versioning scheme a language used and very curious about what is new in Scala that makes it a more attractive platform tomorrow than it is today. I just read that post and so far there is nothing really that interesting. Maybe it is just me.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I don't see a future with Kotlin either. Android has turned into Kotlin's platform. Outside Android I predict Kotlin will be feeling like Scala is nowadays. Too much dependent on JetBrains tooling, leaving other Java tools as 2nd class, trying to spread too wide with Kotlin/Native having specific memory semantics, sequences and co-routines are their own thing, distinct from JVM ones.
  - melling 7y ago
    Does anyone use Scala on Android? I’m sure it requires more resources than Kotlin but phone hardware has greatly improved in the last 5 years.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      I bet someone does, but good luck fighting all the missing tooling and SDK support.
melling 7y ago
Scala seems to be chugging along. Twitter still uses it heavily. I recently watched a few Scala Days 2019 videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHg8YCiyMVRRxb3mJT_0Mg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHg8YCiyMVRRxb3mJT_0Mg It seems to have a healthy community. 3.0 comes out next year. If you want a functional gateway drug, Scala appears to be the answer: https://typelevel.org/cats/ https://typelevel.org/cats/
- threeseed 7y ago
  If you really want to see the future of Scala look at ZIO (http://zio.dev http://zio.dev) By far the most interesting library I've seen on any platform in decades. It handles the most complex concurrency issues with ease. In my current project is has meant an order of magnitude less code to write. And the way you explicitly have to list what your function returns under every situation e.g. success and error is a real improvement in how Java/Scala works e.g. https://zio.dev/docs/datatypes/datatypes_io https://zio.dev/docs/datatypes/datatypes_io And for web developer look at Slinky one of the nicest React implementations on any platform (https://slinky.dev https://slinky.dev)
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Heather Miller's recent talk at JuliaConf kind of pointed out a couple of issues.
ibains 7y ago
We're a scala shop, we get a functional language with features such as parser combinators (packrat parsers) - super useful for building DSLs. Functional-Relational-Mapping (for comprehensions) for SQL. We're able to get good web services with play, with easy to write asynchronous code. Plus all of it runs on robust JVM. We love it, we'd not change it for us, hype or no hype.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  >> super useful for building DSLs This is exactly the reason we do not use Scala anymore. Tired of learning new DSLs for every single problem.
  - ferzul 7y ago
    isn't the alternative to a dsl just constructing classes, giving them to each other, and using a bunch of stringy typed arguments?
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      >> just constructing classes I usually do not want to construct classes, it does not help me achieving what I want in my day to day duties. >> using a bunch of stringy typed arguments? I usually have all sorts of typed arguments.
dionian 7y ago
hard to have a safer bet than the JVM as your platform. not like changes like Jigsaw come around that often
twblalock 7y ago
I remember a lot of people saying "Now I don't need to learn Scala" after Java 8 came out. Java 8 took a lot of the wind out of Scala's sails not by being better, but by showing enough improvement that the benefits of learning Scala looked less attractive than before.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  That is part of it. Platform languages take slowly the best features of guest languages. Additionally, type inference, value classes and pattern matching might not be at Kotlin, Scala, Clojure level, but they are good enough for most devs without having to deal with all the extra stuff.