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Why don't you like implicits? Even the more conservative language C# has them. It beats the heck out of having to do the following in Java: BigInteger x = new

Why don't you like implicits? Even the more conservative language C# has them. It beats the heck out of having to do the following in Java: BigInteger x = new BigInteger(someBigNumString); BigInteger sum = x.add(new BigInteger("1000"); When you can do this in Scala (or similar in C#): BigInt x = BigInt(someBigNumString) BigInt sum = x + 1000 If you're going to say it can be abused, lots of things can be abused in any language. I prefer sanity in this case for implicits over risk of abuse. Having to use something like BigInteger in Java without implicits just makes my head hurt trying to read and write code using it.

pivo 13y ago
I've done exactly one project in Scala, so I'm by no means a Scala expert. My objection to the implicit conversions is mostly when they're used with DSLs. Our project used several libraries that each implemented their own DSLs that of course made use of implicit conversions. There were two things struck me as questionable about the extensive DSL support in Scala. First, Scala source files that used one library's DSL ended up looking like they were written in a different language than Scala source files using another library's DSL. That, to me at least, makes it harder to read the source quickly and understand whats going on. This wasn't a horrible problem, but I found it somewhat burdensome to reorient myself when switching between DSLs, so I feel like it's an overall negative feature of the language. Sort of the opposite of the benefit that more consistant looking languages like Python and Go provide. It also means, at least for me, that and IDE is necessary in order to understand what's going on in source files using certain DSLs. I'm an Emacs user and this is the first time I've felt like I really should have been using an IDE, which was irritating. My second objection was that because of ambiguities between implicit conversions in different DSLs, source files that used more than one DSL had to fall back on explicit conversions and therefore not really use the DSLs. That made some source files using a given library look very different from other source files using the same library, since one was written using the DSL and the other wasn't. This is really my major objection to the language. In many other ways I really enjoyed Scala and wish I could use it more. Yet I wish DSLs and implicit conversions were used much more sparingly in Scala libraries.

pivo 13y ago

I've done exactly one project in Scala, so I'm by no means a Scala expert. My objection to the implicit conversions is mostly when they're used with DSLs. Our project used several libraries that each implemented their own DSLs that of course made use of implicit conversions. There were two things struck me as questionable about the extensive DSL support in Scala. First, Scala source files that used one library's DSL ended up looking like they were written in a different language than Scala source files using another library's DSL. That, to me at least, makes it harder to read the source quickly and understand whats going on. This wasn't a horrible problem, but I found it somewhat burdensome to reorient myself when switching between DSLs, so I feel like it's an overall negative feature of the language. Sort of the opposite of the benefit that more consistant looking languages like Python and Go provide. It also means, at least for me, that and IDE is necessary in order to understand what's going on in source files using certain DSLs. I'm an Emacs user and this is the first time I've felt like I really should have been using an IDE, which was irritating. My second objection was that because of ambiguities between implicit conversions in different DSLs, source files that used more than one DSL had to fall back on explicit conversions and therefore not really use the DSLs. That made some source files using a given library look very different from other source files using the same library, since one was written using the DSL and the other wasn't. This is really my major objection to the language. In many other ways I really enjoyed Scala and wish I could use it more. Yet I wish DSLs and implicit conversions were used much more sparingly in Scala libraries.