12 ms·
Typesafe raises $14M to commercialize Scala
- typetheoristic 14y agoHeh. Clearly the investors didn't do their due diligence, otherwise they would have known that Scala isn't type safe.
- typetheoristic 14y agoSo I get downvoted for pointing out the hubris of naming your company TypeSafe when your language isn't?
- sixbrx 14y agoI didn't downvote but it's probably because details are needed for the assertion.
- typetheoristic 14y agoThis has come up plenty of times on Hacker News with plenty of examples. modersky generally just writes it off as being "harmful" to the community and other nonsense to avoid the issue. Harmful to his valuation is more like it.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoStatic (and even dynamic) type safety is always a shade of gray vs. a black and white thing. A language that is 100% type safe is a language that doesn't do very much (...or requires a theorem prover). Scala is very pragmatic in that regard.
- typetheoristic 14y agoI'm not sure what world you're living in, but Haskell and ML seem to offer some measure of type safety and are also quite practical. Sure there is unsafePerformIO. But the problem is with Scala you don't even need to use unsafe language features to get an unexpected class cast exception. Given that you worked on Scala I'm rather surprised you don't know about this already.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoCould you be more specific? Is the compiler promising more than it can deliver, or are you saying the compiler could check something but simply doesn't? You can have 100% type safety in a straight jacket, but scala pushes what it tries to type check to an extreme limit; "safe" but then also not as conservative as Haskell or ML. I see scala as the c++ of statically typed languages, filling that niche where you need more from your managed language and are willing to take a leap, but this is controversial and a personal opinion.
- SourPatch 14y agoDo you have an example of code that will throw an unexpected ClassCastException?
- pkolaczk 14y agoI never, ever had a ClassCastException in Scala that I wasn't warned about by the compiler. Maybe in theory you are right. But what counts is practice.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoScala is type-safe, but type-safe with escape hatches (which every good language has sometimes, when the programmer knows the truth of theorems the type-checker can't prove). It also has an undecidable type system, but then, so does half of everything nowadays.
- typetheoristic 14y agoIt isn't even about "escape hatches". There are programs that can be written without any special language features that will cause class cast exceptions. Please do your research.
- pkolaczk 14y agoPerhaps there are, but in over 20000 lines of Scala code I haven't encountered any. So this is a non-issue in practice.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoCould you show one?
- nirvdrum 14y agoI'm guessing you got downvoted because it's a silly point to make. Companies have stupid names all the time. No investor is going to care about that.
- typetheoristic 14y agoThere are stupid names and there are misleading names.
- thebluesky 14y agoThere are nitpickers and Nitpickers with a capital N.
- raverbashing 14y agoDear Typesafe We are glad you got funded and wish you all the best Signed: Oracle's legal department
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoScala's on top of Java and the JVM; not a reimplementation of it. Oracle appears to be okay with this, and sometimes encourages it. (Not to imply I'm condoning Oracle's attempted legal smashing of Dalvik)
- cpeterso 14y agoI'm sure an Oracle acquisition is one of Typesafe's exit strategies.
- luriel 14y ago> Scala's on top of Java and the JVM; not a reimplementation of it. Oracle appears to be okay with this, and sometimes encourages it. Oracle could change their mind at any time. Some people at Sun appeared to be Ok with Android and sometimes even encouraged it.
- spacemanaki 14y agoWhat could Oracle do if they changed their mind? Serious inquiry, IANAL, etc etc... I like to avoid speculating about the intersection of tech and legal issues, but is Scala in a very different place than other languages targeting the JVM? Are there any actual legal issues with writing a compiler that emits Java bytecode? This has been going on for a while, maybe as long as Java's been around. There's even some mention of it in the intro to the JVM spec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se7/html/jvms-1.html http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se7/html/jvms-1.htm...
- jfb 14y agoDear Typesafe Congratulations! Now, please do something about your language's godawful syntax and semantics. Signed: a frustrated Lisp programmer.
- mrspeaker 14y agoGreat news! There's more details on the company's blog, too: http://blog.typesafe.com/typesafe-announces-14m-series-b-financing http://blog.typesafe.com/typesafe-announces-14m-series-b-fin...
- nnq 14y agoIn the meantime, in the alternative universe I wish I were living in, the same thing happens to the company behind the widely used Clojure programming language...
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoI'd imagine that's the idea behind Datomic, though less direct: create product, get funded/income, make both Datomic and Clojure better in the process.
- wheaties 14y agoI think Rich knows that you can't sell a technology or language, you have to sell a product. That's why he did Datomic. That said, I write Scala at my current job and am super excited that Typesafe got this funding. Please, Typesafe, follow Rich's lead. Make a real product backed by a technology, not a bunch of libraries! I want you to be around for years to come. p.s. we're hiring. You don't even have to be super smart, just be passionate. owreese AT gmail DOT com
- fogus 14y agoMake a real product backed by a technology Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that they tried that with "Cloud Akka". I do not know the details as to why, but I believe that tech is now open source.
- jonas_boner 14y agoTypesafe has a product; the Typesafe Stack. It's not just "a bunch of libraries". Add to this the Typesafe Console that you get as part of it (http://console-demo.typesafe.com/ http://console-demo.typesafe.com/) and I think you have a pretty nice and complete product.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- snprbob86 14y ago> That's why he did Datomic. That's definitely one reason. I'm willing to bet the other reason is that he believes that the world needs Datomic. Because it really, really does. His talks make it clear that he deeply understands that.
- modersky 14y agoThe coverage at GigaOm provides a bit more substance. http://gigaom.com/cloud/typesafe-gets-14m-to-push-scala-as-a-better-java-than-java/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom http://gigaom.com/cloud/typesafe-gets-14m-to-push-scala-as-a... And there's the Typsafe blog from the source: http://blog.typesafe.com http://blog.typesafe.com
- dkhenry 14y agoThis is great news for the Typesafe Stack. While Scala is bigger then just Typesafe I am glad to see some real support behind the awesome set of libraries they put out.
- atto 14y agoAny one know what the Series B valued Typesafe at?
- tonetheman 14y agoThat is good but I have used Scala before and would not recommend it for an enterprise project. It was rather convoluted and had lots of concepts that just would not make sense to the java programmers in our company. There would be teams that could have used it and thrived but overall the complexity of the language seemed to outweigh any reasons I could give to use it. I wish them the best but I think they will have a hard time getting Scala into the enterprise. For smaller companies it probably would make sense. Ah well not trying to be a downer. :)
- taligent 14y agoYou are 100% correct. When you give developers a new set of tools they are inevitably going to use them. Some will understand and use them well. The overwhelming majority won't. And in an enterprise environment where you have a higher turnover of developers and tight deadlines it will be the equivalent of a ticking time bomb. And because the framework is centered around Play which has/had a good reputation it won't invoke that suspicious, foreign language feeling in developers that it probably should. I very much suspect that the future of Scala is going to rest in the hands of Guillaume Bort's ability to wrap any of the nastiness.
- batista 14y ago>it won't invoke that suspicious, foreign language feeling in developers that it probably should. The "foreign language feeling" is a good thing in a developer? Who would have thought... Talk about narrow horizons... Reminds me of the Blues Brothers joke: "We play both kinds of music at this bar, country AND western".
- pkolaczk 14y agoComplexity of Scala has been debated many times. Just because a language adds some new concepts and is different than other mainstream languages, is not enough to call it "complex". Before you answer question about whether Scala is complex, try to answer the following questions first: Is JEE complex? Is Spring Framework complex? Is Maven complex? Are webservices complex? Is C# complex? They are, they introduce new concepts and in many ways they have much more rough edges than Scala (remember JEE 2.1?). Somehow all of them have been widely used in enterprise software development in many successful projects. I'm surprised by how much flexibility Scala offers with so few simple concepts. Ok, you have to take some time to learn them. But this is the same as learning just any new API.
- eob 14y agoCongratulations to the Typesafe team. As a regular user of Scala, it is very welcome news to see the commercial arm succeed. It's interesting to watch hybrid open-source/commercial enterprises develop. Getting the revenue stream right is tricky. I could really see the Typesafe Console growing to offer a whole host of monitoring around distributed computing. If Typesafe provided a wrapper around Hadoop that would be a welcome addition.
- thebluesky 14y agoGlad to see this. As a longtime Java developer I've found Scala has made coding for the JVM fun again.
- xwowsersx 14y agoFeel the same way. It's hard to go back to Java after Scala and, depressingly, at work I have to :( How do I convince my colleagues to embrace the possibility?
- thebluesky 14y agoBest bet is to write something awesome with it, and mention by the way that it's written in Scala
- pkolaczk 14y agoI'd rather have Typesafe reimplemented Hadoop using Scala (Akka) and wrap it in Hadoop API, than having Hadoop wrapped in Scala API. There are so many things wrong with Hadoop implementation internally, that a complete rewrite would make it good. ;)
- tommorris 14y ago"The company was actually founded by the creators of the Scale and Akka programming languages. The Typesafe Stack, which is compatible with Java, combines the Akka middleware framework" So, TechCrunch, is Akka a programming language or a middleware framework? High-quality reporting as usual from TC.
- jberryman 14y agoI anticipate lots of companies commercializing various FP-ish PLs blossoming in next 1-2 years.
- jaimefjorge 14y agoThis makes me happy and relaxed. Personally I would really like for Typesafe to be successful with their Scala products and consulting. It would only make Scala prevail and have more support for people like me (who have Scala in their development stack). Contrats!
- xwowsersx 14y agoI'm really rooting for wider adoption of Scala. I think the language hits a real sweet spot and I've been trying to transition to more scala for my android development. It's frustrating when I'm told by colleagues at work that they're basically not interested in doing projects in scala because "our clients sometimes need to be able to understand the code" or whatever other lame excuses.
- pohl 14y agoI feel someone should mention this here: Less than a month from now Martin Odersky himself will begin teaching a free online course "Functional Programming Principles in Scala". https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun
- erichocean 14y agoWell, as someone in the last two weeks who: a) already is using Scala b) already is using Akka, and c) wanted a monitoring tool for both (which is part of the "Typespace Stack") and contacted Typesafe about their subscription, I can tell you that none of this matters for people on HN, product-wise. Their "console" is an obscene amount of money per node per year. Yes, PER NODE. With just a few nodes, it's literally cheaper to just build it yourself, even if you had to hire a Scala contractor to do it. So forget scaling linearly up with Typesafe's actual product – you can't afford it. That said, Scala and Akka are awesome and at least they'll continue to be developed for awhile now. Play! 2 is cool as well, but being limited to one Play! app per JVM is something we couldn't live with, so we've moved on to Socco.
- continuations 14y agoWhat is Socco? Google didn't turn up anything.
- simpsond 14y agoI'm guessing: https://github.com/mashupbots/socko https://github.com/mashupbots/socko
- erichocean 14y agoYup, that's the one.
- theatrus2 14y agoAny particular reason for Socko instead of Spray? (http://spray.cc http://spray.cc)