3 ms·

Well, for some people Scala means just too much incidental complexity for too little power gains, and are trying to find different balance on complexity/power s

Well, for some people Scala means just too much incidental complexity for too little power gains, and are trying to find different balance on complexity/power scale by inventing different languages. I can't see what's wrong with that. Exactly! It's easy to make sweeping predictions of obsolescence when you don't even address the criticisms these alternatives levy against Scala. For many, Scala is too functional/academic, and alternative implementations have a real chance of snatching up developers who want just want a cleaner/simpler Java.

carsongross 15y ago
The fact that so many people think that Scala is too complicated is empirical evidence that it is, in fact, too complicated, where "too complicated" is defined as "a lot of people find it too complicated". I'm comfortable with that definition. Gosu has plenty of problems and, admittedly, covariance is a logical hole, but it was an explicit choice: we didn't think the power to weight ratio of the other options were high enough. Daniel Spiewack (Scala expert, very nice guy, and incredibly smart) gave a talk at OSCON on the complexity of the Scala type system: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18780 So even a Scala expert is starting to wonder about the wisdom of pursuing the One True And Sound Type System. At some point, the statically typed guys have to look at the success of dynamically typed languages and wonder just how much static typing matters. We think it matters for tools, mostly, so we picked a type system that isn't sound, but usually does what you want and gets out of your way. That might work for you, it might not: but we are grownups and we've though about it more deeply than this guy apparently thinks we have.
- carsongross 15y ago
  How the hell does this comment get voted down? Sometimes I want to give up on HN.

carsongross 15y ago

The fact that so many people think that Scala is too complicated is empirical evidence that it is, in fact, too complicated, where "too complicated" is defined as "a lot of people find it too complicated". I'm comfortable with that definition. Gosu has plenty of problems and, admittedly, covariance is a logical hole, but it was an explicit choice: we didn't think the power to weight ratio of the other options were high enough. Daniel Spiewack (Scala expert, very nice guy, and incredibly smart) gave a talk at OSCON on the complexity of the Scala type system: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18780 So even a Scala expert is starting to wonder about the wisdom of pursuing the One True And Sound Type System. At some point, the statically typed guys have to look at the success of dynamically typed languages and wonder just how much static typing matters. We think it matters for tools, mostly, so we picked a type system that isn't sound, but usually does what you want and gets out of your way. That might work for you, it might not: but we are grownups and we've though about it more deeply than this guy apparently thinks we have.

carsongross 15y ago
How the hell does this comment get voted down? Sometimes I want to give up on HN.