4 ms·

That's part of the problem: Scala needs fewer features and more focus in other areas, such as tool support (IDE's mostly) and backward compatibility. The probl

by laureny 13y ago

That's part of the problem: Scala needs fewer features and more focus in other areas, such as tool support (IDE's mostly) and backward compatibility. The problem is that Scala's leadership is conflicted: you have Typesafe trying to turn it into a product and the researchers inside Typesafe more focused on producing papers for their academic careers, and therefore steering the boat in a direction that conflicts with pleasing new users.

ssmoot 13y ago
I don't think there's any new feature in 2.10.x that I'd want to give up. Scala 2.11 is modularization (meh), Scripting Engine support (cool), REPL improvements (ok), and Async/Await support (YES!). I wouldn't want to lose those in favor of sitting still. I mean, when people talk about "Scala needs fewer features" what is it exactly? XML? Well that's being modularized out in 2.11. Still seems like a pretty weird thing to stake a claim on though. What features exactly need to be stripped? And BTW, the IDE support (in IntelliJ at least) is pretty good. Maybe not amazing, but coming from ST2+Ruby to IntelliJ+Scala it's night and day. Doesn't seem to be nearly the wasteland to me that some comments imply.
eeperson 13y ago
Why do you think that those doing research inside Typesafe are steering the language in a direction that is user hostile? From what I have seen the effort appears to be more focused on simplifying the language in order to make it easier to use: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/data-types-issues http://www.infoq.com/presentations/data-types-issues
- laureny 13y ago
  > Why do you think that those doing research inside Typesafe are steering the language in a direction that is user hostile? Macros come to mind. It's a feature that completely circumvented the SIP (and was later retrofitted into it), which is still heavily controversial inside scala-internals to the point that we're still not sure whether they will ever be officially part of scalac and which will probably never be used by more than a very tiny minority of Scala users. They took months of work (which could have been put to better use, e.g. IDE support), mostly done with little transparency and which started generating papers for conferences before the project was remotely close to a prototype. This kind of project would never have seen the light of day if the language was led by a company focused primarily on users and sound engineering.
  - necubi 13y ago
    I can personally vouch for the value of Scala macros, which I feel really transform the language. With macros (at least with macro-paradise) I can metaprogram Scala more powerfully than Ruby, while retaining typesafety. Scala + macros is a pretty remarkable language, being very dynamic while also being very safe. The macros support included in 2.10 is pretty basic and difficult to use, but with annotation macros and quasiquotation in macro-paradise those issues are eliminated. And who are you to determine what gets priority amongst open-source devs? Does macro support make scala a worse language? Are you upset that an unpaid researcher (not an employee of typesafe) decided to spend time implementing the macro system instead of working on the IDE?
  - modersky 13y ago
    Macros were not done at Typesafe, but by Eugene Burmako, who's a grad student at EPFL. Grad students do new stuff, and they publish about it, IDE improvements are typically not their piece of cake (Typesafe does have a very capable team working on IDEs). As you imply, macros are labelled experimental, which means that you have to enable them explicitly. Having experimental features is Scala's way of reconciling a vibrant open source community with the stability needed for enterprise use. Needless to say, we do not recommend use of experimental features in enterprises. They are good for playing around with interesting new concepts and sometimes they do lead to something which is a win, such as the beautiful async/await library that will ship in 2.11.
  - adriaanm 13y ago
    Macros were not developed by Typesafe, though we do try to help out. Also, macros are clearly marked experimental -- a compromise for a language co-developed by researchers (EPFL has invested over a decade in Scala) and industry. We (Typesafe) are using macros in our own projects, so the small investment in helping out with their development has largely been paid off because they essentially give us a lightweight compiler plugin mechanism. Users need not be aware macros underly, say scala-async.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - eugene_burmako 13y ago

by laureny 13y ago

ssmoot 13y ago

I don't think there's any new feature in 2.10.x that I'd want to give up. Scala 2.11 is modularization (meh), Scripting Engine support (cool), REPL improvements (ok), and Async/Await support (YES!). I wouldn't want to lose those in favor of sitting still. I mean, when people talk about "Scala needs fewer features" what is it exactly? XML? Well that's being modularized out in 2.11. Still seems like a pretty weird thing to stake a claim on though. What features exactly need to be stripped? And BTW, the IDE support (in IntelliJ at least) is pretty good. Maybe not amazing, but coming from ST2+Ruby to IntelliJ+Scala it's night and day. Doesn't seem to be nearly the wasteland to me that some comments imply.

eeperson 13y ago

Why do you think that those doing research inside Typesafe are steering the language in a direction that is user hostile? From what I have seen the effort appears to be more focused on simplifying the language in order to make it easier to use: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/data-types-issues http://www.infoq.com/presentations/data-types-issues

laureny 13y ago
> Why do you think that those doing research inside Typesafe are steering the language in a direction that is user hostile? Macros come to mind. It's a feature that completely circumvented the SIP (and was later retrofitted into it), which is still heavily controversial inside scala-internals to the point that we're still not sure whether they will ever be officially part of scalac and which will probably never be used by more than a very tiny minority of Scala users. They took months of work (which could have been put to better use, e.g. IDE support), mostly done with little transparency and which started generating papers for conferences before the project was remotely close to a prototype. This kind of project would never have seen the light of day if the language was led by a company focused primarily on users and sound engineering.
- necubi 13y ago
  I can personally vouch for the value of Scala macros, which I feel really transform the language. With macros (at least with macro-paradise) I can metaprogram Scala more powerfully than Ruby, while retaining typesafety. Scala + macros is a pretty remarkable language, being very dynamic while also being very safe. The macros support included in 2.10 is pretty basic and difficult to use, but with annotation macros and quasiquotation in macro-paradise those issues are eliminated. And who are you to determine what gets priority amongst open-source devs? Does macro support make scala a worse language? Are you upset that an unpaid researcher (not an employee of typesafe) decided to spend time implementing the macro system instead of working on the IDE?
- modersky 13y ago
  Macros were not done at Typesafe, but by Eugene Burmako, who's a grad student at EPFL. Grad students do new stuff, and they publish about it, IDE improvements are typically not their piece of cake (Typesafe does have a very capable team working on IDEs). As you imply, macros are labelled experimental, which means that you have to enable them explicitly. Having experimental features is Scala's way of reconciling a vibrant open source community with the stability needed for enterprise use. Needless to say, we do not recommend use of experimental features in enterprises. They are good for playing around with interesting new concepts and sometimes they do lead to something which is a win, such as the beautiful async/await library that will ship in 2.11.
- adriaanm 13y ago
  Macros were not developed by Typesafe, though we do try to help out. Also, macros are clearly marked experimental -- a compromise for a language co-developed by researchers (EPFL has invested over a decade in Scala) and industry. We (Typesafe) are using macros in our own projects, so the small investment in helping out with their development has largely been paid off because they essentially give us a lightweight compiler plugin mechanism. Users need not be aware macros underly, say scala-async.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- eugene_burmako 13y ago