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Members of the Scala community are generally quite mature, and this reflects in their attitude and response when it comes to legitimate criticism of Scala. To
by PommeDeTerre 13y ago
Members of the Scala community are generally quite mature, and this reflects in their attitude and response when it comes to legitimate criticism of Scala.
To most of these people, Scala is merely a tool, often just one among many others. They fully realize that it has flaws, and are very willing to acknowledge the existence of these flaws. They don't take it personally when somebody points out such problems. This is quite evident after reading through the discussion in this case.
This does differ from how members of the the Ruby and JavaScript communities take criticism of those languages, for example. Such people do tend to be much more emotionally attached to those programming languages, for whatever reason. They react with hostility and denial when they encounter legitimate criticism.
Technological improvement happens best when criticism can flow freely. The people involved are focused on acknowledging and accepting that flaws exist, and then proceed to try to fix them. On the other hand, when legitimate criticism is shunned or blindly denied, like in the JavaScript community, technological progress proceeds at a much slower pace. More effort is placed on defending and maintaining the status quo, even when this is the most ineffectual and non-beneficial thing to be doing, than is expended on improving the situation.
- steveklabnik 13y ago> They react with hostility and denial when they encounter legitimate criticism. Citation needed, Rubyists in particular have been whining (and rightfully so) about MRI's poor concurrency support for the past year or two. That's just one counterexample. Everyone that I know that's good at Ruby has their own favorite wart where it does something they hate.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> Citation needed, Rubyists in particular have been whining (and rightfully so) about MRI's poor concurrency support for the past year or two. That's just one counterexample. To be fair, there's a huge difference between complaining about an implementation and complaining about the design of a language.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Citation needed, Rubyists in particular have been whining (and rightfully so) about MRI's poor concurrency support for the past year or two. A lot longer than that, but, to be fair, that's a criticism of the main implementation, not the language -- and one of the selling points of JRuby. OTOH, there's been lots of criticism, and dissection, in the community of infelicities in the language design that make it difficult to implement efficiently.
- sanderjd 13y agoIt's pretty simple really, and far from unique to programming (let alone to the Ruby and JS communities in particular): all communities tend to take criticism from insiders in good faith, and tend to take criticism from outsiders more personally. It is obvious from reading the thread that Tony Morris is "inside" the Scala community, both due to his demonstrated depth of knowledge and to the deference and consideration given to his question. You have to earn the ability to say "Scala is not well-designed" on a Scala list. If somebody showed up and started a thread saying, "I just discovered Scala and it is immediately clear to me that it is poorly designed", it would turn out very differently. It seems to me that there is a pretty typical mix of criticism coming from inside the Ruby and JS communities being responded to thoughtfully, and criticism from outside being responded to defensively.
- chii 13y agowhy does one need to be "inside" the community and have gained reputation before making valid criticism? If somebody who has never posted came out of the blue, and listed some criticisms (which are well researched and valid), it should be taken just as seriously as Tony Morris's piece.
- sanderjd 13y agoI actually didn't say that one needs to be "inside" a community to criticize it, merely that all human communities tend to respond differently to criticism from within than from without. (For instance, Seinfeld's dentist Tim Wotley converting to Judaism "for the jokes".)
- azth 13y ago> This does differ from how members of the the Ruby and JavaScript communities take criticism of those languages, for example. Don't forget Go. :)