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Is it niche? Scala is arguably the single most successful functional language. It interoperates with the whole JVM ecosystem. It's probably the #3 JVM language

Is it niche? Scala is arguably the single most successful functional language. It interoperates with the whole JVM ecosystem. It's probably the #3 JVM language after Java and Kotlin. Spark is Scala, Twitter was (is?) Scala https://sysgears.com/articles/how-and-why-twitter-uses-scala/ https://sysgears.com/articles/how-and-why-twitter-uses-scala...

ActorNightly 9mo ago
Anything that runs on JVM should not be invested in.
- iberator 9mo ago
  Why? I bet you never even wrote custom VM for your lang/architecture. There are like dozen of implementations for JVM alone: sun, Oracle, gnu, IBM etc etc
  - ActorNightly 9mo ago
    Because the idea of classes is baked into JVM. So when writing inline code, with groovy, scala, kotlin, whatever else, the compiler has to basically insert fake classes into the jvm. This may seem trivial, but because its fundamentally "hacky" its not something that is ever going to be as easy to work with and expand.
    - neko-kai 9mo ago
      This is nonsense. And, not that there's anything wrong with classes, but compilers no longer need to 'insert fake classes' for anonymous functions since Java 8.
      - ActorNightly 9mo ago
        Pretty sure everything in the jvm has to be tied to a class structure by definition.
        neko-kai 9mo ago
        Yes, and? Classes are not inherently bad, hence saying that JVM should not be invested in because its bytecode requires classes is nonsense. re: inline lambdas, they have to be _tied_ to a class, and defined as methods, indeed. But they no longer have to be standalone classes themselves since JDK8
- bachmeier 9mo ago
  There's also scala.js and Scala Native, even if the JVM is the primary platform.
epolanski 9mo ago
Scala was niche (but of course, you need to define niche first) and its market share has shrunk further in the last decade.
dehrmann 9mo ago
> Scala is arguably the single most successful functional language. That would be Javascript.
- halfmatthalfcat 9mo ago
  You're being downvoted but you aren't necessarily wrong. Javascript is probably one of the most approachable functional-like languages without being dogmatically functional.

ActorNightly 9mo ago

Anything that runs on JVM should not be invested in.

iberator 9mo ago
Why? I bet you never even wrote custom VM for your lang/architecture. There are like dozen of implementations for JVM alone: sun, Oracle, gnu, IBM etc etc
- ActorNightly 9mo ago
  Because the idea of classes is baked into JVM. So when writing inline code, with groovy, scala, kotlin, whatever else, the compiler has to basically insert fake classes into the jvm. This may seem trivial, but because its fundamentally "hacky" its not something that is ever going to be as easy to work with and expand.
  - neko-kai 9mo ago
    This is nonsense. And, not that there's anything wrong with classes, but compilers no longer need to 'insert fake classes' for anonymous functions since Java 8.
    - ActorNightly 9mo ago
      Pretty sure everything in the jvm has to be tied to a class structure by definition.
      - neko-kai 9mo ago
        Yes, and? Classes are not inherently bad, hence saying that JVM should not be invested in because its bytecode requires classes is nonsense. re: inline lambdas, they have to be _tied_ to a class, and defined as methods, indeed. But they no longer have to be standalone classes themselves since JDK8
bachmeier 9mo ago
There's also scala.js and Scala Native, even if the JVM is the primary platform.

epolanski 9mo ago

Scala was niche (but of course, you need to define niche first) and its market share has shrunk further in the last decade.

dehrmann 9mo ago

> Scala is arguably the single most successful functional language. That would be Javascript.

halfmatthalfcat 9mo ago
You're being downvoted but you aren't necessarily wrong. Javascript is probably one of the most approachable functional-like languages without being dogmatically functional.