4 ms·
It's interesting because I found the original article quite vapid, but the takeaway of the top two comments of the discussion quite enlightening: the exact same
by mtrimpe 13y ago
It's interesting because I found the original article quite vapid, but the takeaway of the top two comments of the discussion quite enlightening: the exact same set of features sound like heaven to some and hell to others.
Perhaps Scala is the Napolean Dynamite [1] of programming languages.
Personally I'm also indecisive about Scala because while I'd take Scala over Java any day; I'm still hoping that something more elegant will become the next 'enterprise standard' (and I'll be programming Clojure instead whenever I get the chance.)
Scala reminds of the saying that just because the American SUV is the most elegant solution for making a family vehicle that looks masculine; it still doesn't mean they're not ugly.
Scala feels a bit like that SUV: Just because it's the most elegant solution to getting something Haskell'ish shoehorned into the JVM still doesn't make the end result elegant.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- CmonDev 13y ago"something more elegant will become the next 'enterprise standard'" - C# is both.
- mtrimpe 13y agoAssuming F# is included I actually agree with that to a large degree except for the fact that the division between C# vs. OSS languages is more ideological than anything else.
- talloaktrees 13y agoI think the ideological part plays a big role in keeping people away from C#, unfortunately
- pjmlp 13y agoOnly in places like HN, in the enterprise world we are not short of .NET projects.
- mtrimpe 13y agoAnd neither is the enterprise world short of JVM projects. It seems almost like a Republic vs. Democrat kind of division. Neither side is in danger of disappearing; each views the other with derision and very few subjects ever 'cross the party line.'
- pjmlp 13y ago> And neither is the enterprise world short of JVM projects. Yes, I fully agree. We jump between JVM and .NET land in our projects, whereas the myriad of wannabe be replacements are far far away from most enterprise radars.
- pjmlp 13y agoSadly F# is taking C++'s place on Visual Studio's list of not so loved languages. Although many financial systems are picking it up, and a wealthy community is building around it in the .NET world, Microsoft development tools team still seems not sure how to steer it.
- mtrimpe 13y agoTooling-wise F# is also a difficult beast to tame. I think I even remember watching a Simon Peyton Jones video about those exact challenges...
- pjmlp 13y agoYes there are challenges, but most of them are solvable when the willingness to overcome them exists.
- CmonDev 13y ago"many financial systems are picking it up" - if that was enough Silverlight would've been still alive :(.
- MichaelGG 13y agoMS painted themselves into a corner with their marketing message. They can't really come out and admit F# is superior to C# in practically every sense. Apparently now, the C# lead designer seems more interested in patching up JavaScript than actually catching C# up to the state-of-the-art. Meanwhile, MS has marketed F# as "financial and scientific". Remember the F# team lead is also the main force behind getting decent generics into the CLR, a concept MS corp had dismissed as "academic". So it's no surprise they aren't continuing that line of thinking.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Scala reminds of the saying that just because the American SUV is the most elegant solution for making a family vehicle that looks masculine; it still doesn't mean they're not ugly. Way off topic for the main point, but the actual problem the SUV originally solved was "how to make a mass-market passenger vehicle that counts as a 'light truck' rather than an 'auto' for various safety and other standards."