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> what advantages do Kotlin and Scala bring That it's not Java. It's a huge thing with some developers not wanting to touch Java for <insert reason> but would
by re-thc 3y ago
> what advantages do Kotlin and Scala bring
That it's not Java. It's a huge thing with some developers not wanting to touch Java for <insert reason> but would be fine with Kotlin or Scala.
- pjmlp 3y agoThen better go elsewhere, rather than work on Java Virtual Machine. It is like using UNIX and not wanting to understand, touch, C.
- erik_seaberg 3y agoThe JVM’s main value props are a world-class single dispatch runtime and GC, and a huge ecosystem of compatible OO libraries. It also doesn’t care whether you are writing Java by hand. If your team can master any of the more concise and productive languages, they should.
- pjmlp 3y agoExcept the tiny detail that a big part of that value proposition is written in Java. If people want to ignoring the foundations of their toolbox, that says a lot about the skillset.
- erik_seaberg 3y agoIt’s hard for me to judge, when I’ve known Java since 1996. I might need to know Java, but I don’t need to write it. Maybe it’s enough that someone on the team knows it. Maybe it’s not really possible to master Scala/Clojure/Kotlin/Groovy/AspectJ without knowing at least some Java. Likewise, I probably need to know C to use POSIX, but it’s so unsafe that I should not be writing it.
- pjmlp 3y agoYes, the poor guy that needs to jump in for: - understanding stack traces - writing idiomatic bindings for libraries - debugging why Java frameworks fail consuming jar files whose bytecode was generated in a different way - debugging why a jar misbehaves after a JVM bytecode rewriting tool messed up the bytecode sequence used to emulate other language semantics on top of the JVM - adopting libraries whose compiler plugins and annotation procesors only understand Java semantics - mapping debuging information and telemetry data from tooling like JFR into the original code of the guest language.
- still_grokking 3y agoI'm using Linux as my solely desktop OS since over 20 years. (As it's the only usable OS) At the same time I hate C and everything around it! Both things go quite well hand in hand. You don't have to touch any C-madness most of the time. Even when you compile stuff yourself, like for example the Kernel, you almost never have to interact with C directly. I would still prefer an OS written in Scala, but we don't have that at the moment. So I guess I will stick with Linux for the time being.
- pjmlp 3y agoI am quite vocal about C, as proven by my lenghty C rants, yet I do understand the value of knowing and understanding the foundations we stand on.