7 ms·

What about the fact that Kotlin collections are fully interoperable with Java collection? That makes the transition significantly easier.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I believe Scala's are as well, this seems to be a pretty complete list: https://www.scala-lang.org/api/2.13.5/scala/jdk/javaapi/CollectionConverters$.html https://www.scala-lang.org/api/2.13.5/scala/jdk/javaapi/Coll...
- balefrost 5y ago
  Kotlin's STDLIB collection types are essentially aliases for the Java types. So while the Scala adapters are low-cost, in Kotlin everything's zero-cost. One other benefit of that is you maintain object identity. I don't think that Scala's wrappers do that.
  - darksaints 5y ago
    Scala has the full suite of Java collections without any conversion or overhead whatsoever. But it also has Scala collections. With scala collections you get the full power of the Scala type system, as well as a much richer and full featured collections api. So most scala programmers won't bother with java collections unless they have specific java interop requirements. The Scala adapters are merely ways of converting java collections to scala collections and vice versa.
    - joshlemer 5y ago
      I think it's a fair complaint that in Scala it is a pain in the ass to deal with Java collections. You have to litter your whole code with `.asScala` and `.asJava`, the java collections don't work with for comprehensions, etc.
      - esarbe 5y ago
        It's only a problem if you can't decide which part of your project to write with which language. If I have to use Java, I put it into a separate sub-project and make sure that I have a nice API to interface between the subprojects. `.asJava` and `.asScala` then only appear at very specific places where the interop happens.
        joshlemer 5y ago
        What you're describing is in and of itself a severe cost and barrier to the very thing we're describing: interoperability between Java and Scala collections. On the one hand you have Scala where you either have to constantly `.asScala` and `.asJava`, or go your route of ensuring that in any given module only deals with either Scala or Java collections. This may involve additional abstractions or classes to achieve. On the other hand you have Kotlin which just directly, frictionlessly deals with Kotlin/Java collections the same way (in fact, they literally are the same). We're comparing "some small-to-medium cost" against "zero-cost". Or an other way of saying it is that your approach of walling off modules as either java-collection or scala-collection is kind of like saying "Java and Scala collections work well together, so long as you don't have to use them together too much. If you minimize how much they need to interoperate, the problem is not so bad."
        esarbe 5y ago
        > Or an other way of saying it is that your approach of walling off modules as either java-collection or scala-collection is kind of like saying "Java and Scala collections work well together, so long as you don't have to use them together too much. If you minimize how much they need to interoperate, the problem is not so bad." Yes, that's actually a very good way to rephrase it. That being said; I myself wouldn't limit that to just the collections; Java and Scala on the language level have excellent interop. For Scala-the-ecosystem the story is a bit different. Java is not the primary target for most of the Scala libraries. Not even a secondary one, I dare say. (I'm not even sure how you would model a Java API for a library - say; Cats - that uses implicits for the heavy lifting.) That of course stems for the fact that Scala makes use of concepts that have no correspondence in neither Java or Kotlin, so there will necessarily be something lost in translation.
lmm 5y ago
You can use Java collections in Scala just as you do in Kotlin, and in fact interop is easier in Scala since you can write typeclass instances for the Java types whereas there's no equivalent for that in Kotlin. The real difference is that more of the Kotlin ecosystem uses Java's fundamentally mutable collections compared to the Scala ecosystem, and using actually immutable collections in Kotlin is extremely difficult to the point that essentially no-one does it. IMO that's a bad tradeoff in the long term, but you can absolutely take the same approach in Scala if you really want to.
- lolinder 5y ago
  I write Kotlin all day and almost exclusively use immutable types. What difficulties with using them are are you referring to?
  - lmm 5y ago
    Kotlin doesn't have immutable collection types in the standard library (it lets you use a read-only interface but the collection is really still mutable and will be seen as such by any Java code), so if you want actually immutable collections you have to use non-standard collections, and since Kotlin doesn't have typeclasses or implicit conversions it's difficult to interoperate between any non-standard collection library and other Kotlin code.
    - lolinder 5y ago
      Ah, fair. I've never actually seen that become a problem, but I can see how it would be if I were doing more extensive Java interop.
      - lmm 5y ago
        Yeah, if all your code and libraries are Kotlin then there's less risk of a collection being mutated under you (though even then, Kotlin gives you no way to write a method that only accepts an immutable collection - you can write a method that accepts a view-only interface, but it will always be possible to pass a mutable collection and mutate it in parallel while that method is running). But of course in that scenario there's also zero benefit from having compatibility with the Java collections.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

I believe Scala's are as well, this seems to be a pretty complete list: https://www.scala-lang.org/api/2.13.5/scala/jdk/javaapi/CollectionConverters$.html https://www.scala-lang.org/api/2.13.5/scala/jdk/javaapi/Coll...

balefrost 5y ago
Kotlin's STDLIB collection types are essentially aliases for the Java types. So while the Scala adapters are low-cost, in Kotlin everything's zero-cost. One other benefit of that is you maintain object identity. I don't think that Scala's wrappers do that.
- darksaints 5y ago
  Scala has the full suite of Java collections without any conversion or overhead whatsoever. But it also has Scala collections. With scala collections you get the full power of the Scala type system, as well as a much richer and full featured collections api. So most scala programmers won't bother with java collections unless they have specific java interop requirements. The Scala adapters are merely ways of converting java collections to scala collections and vice versa.
  - joshlemer 5y ago
    I think it's a fair complaint that in Scala it is a pain in the ass to deal with Java collections. You have to litter your whole code with `.asScala` and `.asJava`, the java collections don't work with for comprehensions, etc.
    - esarbe 5y ago
      It's only a problem if you can't decide which part of your project to write with which language. If I have to use Java, I put it into a separate sub-project and make sure that I have a nice API to interface between the subprojects. `.asJava` and `.asScala` then only appear at very specific places where the interop happens.
      - joshlemer 5y ago
        What you're describing is in and of itself a severe cost and barrier to the very thing we're describing: interoperability between Java and Scala collections. On the one hand you have Scala where you either have to constantly `.asScala` and `.asJava`, or go your route of ensuring that in any given module only deals with either Scala or Java collections. This may involve additional abstractions or classes to achieve. On the other hand you have Kotlin which just directly, frictionlessly deals with Kotlin/Java collections the same way (in fact, they literally are the same). We're comparing "some small-to-medium cost" against "zero-cost". Or an other way of saying it is that your approach of walling off modules as either java-collection or scala-collection is kind of like saying "Java and Scala collections work well together, so long as you don't have to use them together too much. If you minimize how much they need to interoperate, the problem is not so bad."
        esarbe 5y ago
        > Or an other way of saying it is that your approach of walling off modules as either java-collection or scala-collection is kind of like saying "Java and Scala collections work well together, so long as you don't have to use them together too much. If you minimize how much they need to interoperate, the problem is not so bad." Yes, that's actually a very good way to rephrase it. That being said; I myself wouldn't limit that to just the collections; Java and Scala on the language level have excellent interop. For Scala-the-ecosystem the story is a bit different. Java is not the primary target for most of the Scala libraries. Not even a secondary one, I dare say. (I'm not even sure how you would model a Java API for a library - say; Cats - that uses implicits for the heavy lifting.) That of course stems for the fact that Scala makes use of concepts that have no correspondence in neither Java or Kotlin, so there will necessarily be something lost in translation.

lmm 5y ago

You can use Java collections in Scala just as you do in Kotlin, and in fact interop is easier in Scala since you can write typeclass instances for the Java types whereas there's no equivalent for that in Kotlin. The real difference is that more of the Kotlin ecosystem uses Java's fundamentally mutable collections compared to the Scala ecosystem, and using actually immutable collections in Kotlin is extremely difficult to the point that essentially no-one does it. IMO that's a bad tradeoff in the long term, but you can absolutely take the same approach in Scala if you really want to.

lolinder 5y ago
I write Kotlin all day and almost exclusively use immutable types. What difficulties with using them are are you referring to?
- lmm 5y ago
  Kotlin doesn't have immutable collection types in the standard library (it lets you use a read-only interface but the collection is really still mutable and will be seen as such by any Java code), so if you want actually immutable collections you have to use non-standard collections, and since Kotlin doesn't have typeclasses or implicit conversions it's difficult to interoperate between any non-standard collection library and other Kotlin code.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    Ah, fair. I've never actually seen that become a problem, but I can see how it would be if I were doing more extensive Java interop.
    - lmm 5y ago
      Yeah, if all your code and libraries are Kotlin then there's less risk of a collection being mutated under you (though even then, Kotlin gives you no way to write a method that only accepts an immutable collection - you can write a method that accepts a view-only interface, but it will always be possible to pass a mutable collection and mutate it in parallel while that method is running). But of course in that scenario there's also zero benefit from having compatibility with the Java collections.