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I had my first experience for Scala last week with doing the Stripe CTF. I really liked the look of the language and I started trying to develop my solution in

by aidos 13y ago

I had my first experience for Scala last week with doing the Stripe CTF. I really liked the look of the language and I started trying to develop my solution in it. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and had a reasonable idea of what to write to get there. Holly molly, compilation times were absolutely horrible. I tried to persevere but a tiny change would mean 2 minutes waiting for a recompile. In the end I just switched to python where I could develop a solution from scratch (remember, the Scala solution was 90% finished) in no time at all. Would like to look closer at the language one day but I have better things to do with time than waiting for a machine to churn through code.

lmm 13y ago
Use incremental compilation during development, and keep your files small (this is a good idea anyway). If you're coming at it from a python background were you working in the command line? A lot of the benefits of scala only really apply when using it in an IDE.
eklavya 13y ago
I guess you were having some troubles and asked around in #scala. A huge amount of work in Scala is left for the compiler, all the niceties and features put that load on it. So while it makes life a lot more easier for you it also has more work to do. Anyways compile times have improved significantly in Scala 2.11 but more importantly, incremental compilation has landed.
virtualwhys 13y ago
> I tried to persevere but a tiny change would mean 2 minutes waiting for a recompile incremental compilation: sbt> ~run in most cases code changes should take one second. Note: SBT sub projects are God's gift to Scala devs (or Mark Harrah's gift at any rate). You have to get your feet wet in the language, trying something last week for a day or two is not going to result in you flying to the moon on the productivity spaceship of delight. Programming in Scala 2nd edition is a great intro to the language.
- aidos 13y ago
  Ok. Sounds like there's a solution so I'll try again at some point. There was a build.sh with the project that I was using. I saw something about sbt in there so had a look on their website but couldn't obviously see how to fix the issue.
  - virtualwhys 13y ago
    Play framework's a decent gateway drug to Scala, can help you get some of the basics under your belt while seeing tangible results. Otherwise, a book or 2 on Scala goes a long way.

by aidos 13y ago

lmm 13y ago

Use incremental compilation during development, and keep your files small (this is a good idea anyway). If you're coming at it from a python background were you working in the command line? A lot of the benefits of scala only really apply when using it in an IDE.

eklavya 13y ago

I guess you were having some troubles and asked around in #scala. A huge amount of work in Scala is left for the compiler, all the niceties and features put that load on it. So while it makes life a lot more easier for you it also has more work to do. Anyways compile times have improved significantly in Scala 2.11 but more importantly, incremental compilation has landed.

virtualwhys 13y ago

> I tried to persevere but a tiny change would mean 2 minutes waiting for a recompile incremental compilation: sbt> ~run in most cases code changes should take one second. Note: SBT sub projects are God's gift to Scala devs (or Mark Harrah's gift at any rate). You have to get your feet wet in the language, trying something last week for a day or two is not going to result in you flying to the moon on the productivity spaceship of delight. Programming in Scala 2nd edition is a great intro to the language.

aidos 13y ago
Ok. Sounds like there's a solution so I'll try again at some point. There was a build.sh with the project that I was using. I saw something about sbt in there so had a look on their website but couldn't obviously see how to fix the issue.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  Play framework's a decent gateway drug to Scala, can help you get some of the basics under your belt while seeing tangible results. Otherwise, a book or 2 on Scala goes a long way.