5 ms·

I would say that PHP, or any dynamic language for that matter, is going to result in faster iterations just by virtue of never having to wait for the compiler t

I would say that PHP, or any dynamic language for that matter, is going to result in faster iterations just by virtue of never having to wait for the compiler to catch up. Even with incremental compilation and SBT subprojects (i.e. modules to keep recompiled code to a minimum) there's a compile time hit on _every_ source file change; that adds up over the lifetime of a project. You guys may be more productive now than you were with PHP, but that's likely due more to the awesome libraries you're using than Scala development being inherently faster than PHP.

Aqueous 13y ago
Right. But my argument is that the compile hit as at least mostly compensated for by the guarantee of program correctness, which PHP doesn't have. Forcing you to go through a user interaction to see if your change broke anything, which takes time.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  Goes both ways. In PHP you can take an arbitrarily complex object graph and marshall it to JSON with a few keystrokes; in Scala, unless you're working with MongoDB or other native JSON speaking backeend, you've got to go through a laborious manual process to do the same...for each complex object. That's partly why Dynamic came about in Scala, to deal with the case where, shit, you've already got a type safe represention of an object in Scala, and now you have to create a type safe JSON version of the same -- pointless double duty...PHP, Python, Groovy, Ruby, etc. win this particular battle. I am, BTW, completely playing devil's advocate here ;-), Scala's my daily bread; PHP, wow, I did some horrible things [shudder]
  - Aqueous 13y ago
    That's true about JSON - it can be quite tedious if you have to write JSON reads and writes for things like JSON validation. But Play can autogenerate the reads/writes combinators for cases where validation isn't needed, so it ends up being as simple as putting a JsonFormatter in your companion object for a case class - 1 line. Play (and Jerkson) usually knows what to do with it, assuming all nested classes have json formatters in their companion objects, too. I am just glad to be done with PHP.
    - virtualwhys 13y ago
      Agreed, Scala JSON libs are taking the a lot of the boilerplate pain away, but still not quite at the foo.toJson stage. > I am just glad to be done with PHP shhhh, this is, you know, a PHP thread ;-)
pkolaczk 13y ago
In PHP cycles are slightly faster, but Scala lets you do away with lot less cycles. Not only because of awesome library, but also because excellent IDE support with instant type-checking.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  > excellent IDE support with instant type-checking heh, that's a stretch, perhaps compared to 3 years ago the IDE story in Scala is all roses. It's improved with time, but I still get arggghhh inducing moments where a given source file turns into a sea of red Xs despite SBT compiling the code just fine. Often an ./eclipse -clean is the only way to right the ship. Perhaps IntelliJ provides a different experience (although I've heard there are issues with the Scala plugin there as well).
  - pkolaczk 13y ago
    IntelliJ IDEA provides a different experience. I tried the eclipse plugin a month ago - much better than it was 2 years ago, but still far behind Idea. Also, keep in mind, we're comparing it to PHP and not Java.

Aqueous 13y ago

Right. But my argument is that the compile hit as at least mostly compensated for by the guarantee of program correctness, which PHP doesn't have. Forcing you to go through a user interaction to see if your change broke anything, which takes time.

virtualwhys 13y ago
Goes both ways. In PHP you can take an arbitrarily complex object graph and marshall it to JSON with a few keystrokes; in Scala, unless you're working with MongoDB or other native JSON speaking backeend, you've got to go through a laborious manual process to do the same...for each complex object. That's partly why Dynamic came about in Scala, to deal with the case where, shit, you've already got a type safe represention of an object in Scala, and now you have to create a type safe JSON version of the same -- pointless double duty...PHP, Python, Groovy, Ruby, etc. win this particular battle. I am, BTW, completely playing devil's advocate here ;-), Scala's my daily bread; PHP, wow, I did some horrible things [shudder]
- Aqueous 13y ago
  That's true about JSON - it can be quite tedious if you have to write JSON reads and writes for things like JSON validation. But Play can autogenerate the reads/writes combinators for cases where validation isn't needed, so it ends up being as simple as putting a JsonFormatter in your companion object for a case class - 1 line. Play (and Jerkson) usually knows what to do with it, assuming all nested classes have json formatters in their companion objects, too. I am just glad to be done with PHP.
  - virtualwhys 13y ago
    Agreed, Scala JSON libs are taking the a lot of the boilerplate pain away, but still not quite at the foo.toJson stage. > I am just glad to be done with PHP shhhh, this is, you know, a PHP thread ;-)

pkolaczk 13y ago

In PHP cycles are slightly faster, but Scala lets you do away with lot less cycles. Not only because of awesome library, but also because excellent IDE support with instant type-checking.

virtualwhys 13y ago
> excellent IDE support with instant type-checking heh, that's a stretch, perhaps compared to 3 years ago the IDE story in Scala is all roses. It's improved with time, but I still get arggghhh inducing moments where a given source file turns into a sea of red Xs despite SBT compiling the code just fine. Often an ./eclipse -clean is the only way to right the ship. Perhaps IntelliJ provides a different experience (although I've heard there are issues with the Scala plugin there as well).
- pkolaczk 13y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA provides a different experience. I tried the eclipse plugin a month ago - much better than it was 2 years ago, but still far behind Idea. Also, keep in mind, we're comparing it to PHP and not Java.