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How about Clojure vs Scala? Anecdotally speaking, I've seen more Clojure than Scala at my company, both being incredibly niche (I've seen more Groovy than eithe

How about Clojure vs Scala? Anecdotally speaking, I've seen more Clojure than Scala at my company, both being incredibly niche (I've seen more Groovy than either to be honest). If I want to get more into FP, is there any strong positives/negatives for either? I must say though that after using Racket for a bit, I am a fan of the parens. Makes expressions crystal clear.

yw3410 6y ago
I use a variety of languages and always feel that Scala gets a bad-rap because it's a compromise language (though I feel the same about Rust and most people seem to like it). Scala 3 pros: + Higher-Kinds + Type-classes + Decent-ish hygienic macros + Decent OO model with mixins + for-comphrension + Compile-time evaluation + Laziness + Currying It's pretty good at all of them - but not quite. If you're used to Haskell you'll get annoyed at the fact that the inference is only within a single statement and that polymorphic functions resolve the typeclasses in a particular way. If you're used to Scheme, you'll get frustrated that the identifiers can't be created easily in its new macro system or you can't manipulate the scope-sets of the identifiers. If you're used to Erlang you'll wonder why Akka can't reload functions easily. If you're from Java you'll wonder why everyone is going on about profunctors, effects and finally tag-less.
kodon 6y ago
Scala seems to get the most love from spark users. But even then the python bindings are pretty good. Scala 3 is going to be released soon, so there might be a surge of interest.
schmooser 6y ago
Several big mainstream products are implemented in Scala, including Apache Spark and Akka. Clojure has nothing of comparable size.
- fshr 6y ago
  Metabase is written in Clojure.
- user1241320 6y ago
  Datomic is written in Clojure.
- elamje 6y ago
  Apache Storm was written in Clojure, and was only recently rewritten in Java:)
dehrmann 6y ago
I don't see a future for Scala. Since Java got lambdas and var, enough of the pain is gone that Scala ends up adding its own pain. And now there's Kotlin if you really want to avoid boilerplate and not deal with sbt. Clojure is actually designed as a functional language and not as multi-paradigm as Scala.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  Even with Scala 3 on the horizon (I believe end of Q1 2021)? I recently worked on a Java 11/Spring app and there is still plenty of pain in Java to go around when compared to other, more terse languages.
- ci5er 6y ago
  > I don't see a future for Scala. Yeah. It was pretty clumsy before it got less clumsy - and it makes me sad because a lot of the graph-based databased technologies glomed onto it pretty early on - and I mostly like where they say they are going. And their base compile Suxxor and they messed up their community with the new compile Python3 style. I guess Kotlin is cool and clean - which is good. And has no ecosystem - which is bad. But stapling JVM language together for ad-hoc purposes is what we have learned how to do, neh? For my part, I'm probably going to go back to high performance renderers and embedded systems. Like the man said bad in the day: "You can all go to hell - I am going to Texas". (Unfortunately I have been there for 30 years since I learned that I hate it.
- blandflakes 6y ago
  Honestly I feel like if Scala would pick a less insane build tool, it would have much better adoption.
  - amir734jj 6y ago
    SBT is a disaster. I love scala as a language but hate sbt. Scala 3 looks promising but I seriously get PTSD thinking about scala. We have a lot of scala spark apps at the l financial company I work for and everyone gets scared touching it. Java has improved a lot since I last touched so I'm not sure people outside of academia will use it. For my PhD thesis I use scala without SBT and I love it.

yw3410 6y ago

I use a variety of languages and always feel that Scala gets a bad-rap because it's a compromise language (though I feel the same about Rust and most people seem to like it). Scala 3 pros: + Higher-Kinds + Type-classes + Decent-ish hygienic macros + Decent OO model with mixins + for-comphrension + Compile-time evaluation + Laziness + Currying It's pretty good at all of them - but not quite. If you're used to Haskell you'll get annoyed at the fact that the inference is only within a single statement and that polymorphic functions resolve the typeclasses in a particular way. If you're used to Scheme, you'll get frustrated that the identifiers can't be created easily in its new macro system or you can't manipulate the scope-sets of the identifiers. If you're used to Erlang you'll wonder why Akka can't reload functions easily. If you're from Java you'll wonder why everyone is going on about profunctors, effects and finally tag-less.

kodon 6y ago

Scala seems to get the most love from spark users. But even then the python bindings are pretty good. Scala 3 is going to be released soon, so there might be a surge of interest.

schmooser 6y ago

Several big mainstream products are implemented in Scala, including Apache Spark and Akka. Clojure has nothing of comparable size.

fshr 6y ago
Metabase is written in Clojure.
user1241320 6y ago
Datomic is written in Clojure.
elamje 6y ago
Apache Storm was written in Clojure, and was only recently rewritten in Java:)

dehrmann 6y ago

I don't see a future for Scala. Since Java got lambdas and var, enough of the pain is gone that Scala ends up adding its own pain. And now there's Kotlin if you really want to avoid boilerplate and not deal with sbt. Clojure is actually designed as a functional language and not as multi-paradigm as Scala.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
Even with Scala 3 on the horizon (I believe end of Q1 2021)? I recently worked on a Java 11/Spring app and there is still plenty of pain in Java to go around when compared to other, more terse languages.
ci5er 6y ago
> I don't see a future for Scala. Yeah. It was pretty clumsy before it got less clumsy - and it makes me sad because a lot of the graph-based databased technologies glomed onto it pretty early on - and I mostly like where they say they are going. And their base compile Suxxor and they messed up their community with the new compile Python3 style. I guess Kotlin is cool and clean - which is good. And has no ecosystem - which is bad. But stapling JVM language together for ad-hoc purposes is what we have learned how to do, neh? For my part, I'm probably going to go back to high performance renderers and embedded systems. Like the man said bad in the day: "You can all go to hell - I am going to Texas". (Unfortunately I have been there for 30 years since I learned that I hate it.
blandflakes 6y ago
Honestly I feel like if Scala would pick a less insane build tool, it would have much better adoption.
- amir734jj 6y ago
  SBT is a disaster. I love scala as a language but hate sbt. Scala 3 looks promising but I seriously get PTSD thinking about scala. We have a lot of scala spark apps at the l financial company I work for and everyone gets scared touching it. Java has improved a lot since I last touched so I'm not sure people outside of academia will use it. For my PhD thesis I use scala without SBT and I love it.