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I've given up PHP for Scala recently, and it doesn't seem too difficult yet. Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of "Programming In Scala" by the languages auth

I've given up PHP for Scala recently, and it doesn't seem too difficult yet. Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of "Programming In Scala" by the languages author, and read it starting from page one, even if you think you're an expert programming. I can't learn a new language quickly, so to learn I'm blogging about my experiences at http://leftnode.com http://leftnode.com and trying to write as many small programs as possible, moving into larger ones when I'm ready. I'm trying to ignore many of the larger projects and in-depth Scala projects for the time being so I don't overwhelm myself and give up on learning the language.

jshen 15y ago
I used scala for a few projects, and overall I like it much more than java. Let's just get that out of the way upfront :) I loved scala when I was writing and reading my own code, but it started to feel like perl when I had to use and dig through other peoples code. This is a fairly superficial feeling, and I could be off mark, so take it with a grain of salt. I definitely plan to use scala again when I need the performance over jruby/clojure, in place of java of course.
- kaffiene 15y ago
  I don't think that's superficial. That's the same reason that I used to love programming in C++ but began to see its foibles when I started working with large groups of C++ programmers. People tend to work in a stylistic cul-de-sac which doesn't play nicely with others. Criticising Java seems to be a favourite passtime of IT snobs, but theres a lot of real world payoff to having a language which is simple and tends to have one (idiomatic) way of doing things. Not that its perfect - not by a long shot. Writing languages is easy (I've written a couple) but writing one which people actually want to use is a hell of a lot harder. That said, I like quite a few of Scala's ideas. I'd love closures, type inference and traits in Java.

jshen 15y ago

I used scala for a few projects, and overall I like it much more than java. Let's just get that out of the way upfront :) I loved scala when I was writing and reading my own code, but it started to feel like perl when I had to use and dig through other peoples code. This is a fairly superficial feeling, and I could be off mark, so take it with a grain of salt. I definitely plan to use scala again when I need the performance over jruby/clojure, in place of java of course.

kaffiene 15y ago
I don't think that's superficial. That's the same reason that I used to love programming in C++ but began to see its foibles when I started working with large groups of C++ programmers. People tend to work in a stylistic cul-de-sac which doesn't play nicely with others. Criticising Java seems to be a favourite passtime of IT snobs, but theres a lot of real world payoff to having a language which is simple and tends to have one (idiomatic) way of doing things. Not that its perfect - not by a long shot. Writing languages is easy (I've written a couple) but writing one which people actually want to use is a hell of a lot harder. That said, I like quite a few of Scala's ideas. I'd love closures, type inference and traits in Java.