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We've had the same experience with Scala. It's the most enjoyable language I've ever coded in. We switched away from Java for most new development a while back

We've had the same experience with Scala. It's the most enjoyable language I've ever coded in. We switched away from Java for most new development a while back already. The anti-Scala rants are just confusing to us. Most of the people complaining just seem to be random non-Scala developers recycling other peoples' criticisms.

etrain 13y ago
I hear Java people say "I love scala" a lot. I do not hear people coming from other environments saying this.
- kasey_junk 13y ago
  I've come from lots of environments, and you're correct, I won't say "I love Scala". What I will say, is right now, if you are targeting the JVM there aren't any better alternatives (I believe in strong typing). Maybe someday Kotlin or Ceylon or Java 9 will be better but for now Scala is the best choice.
- GFischer 13y ago
  It certainly does sound like a step up from Java, while retaining most (all?) of the good things. Being a "better" alternative to Java (edit: as kasey says, targeting the JVM) doesn't sound like a bad place to be :) . It's on my "to-try" list but the little development I do nowadays is on the .NET platform. Which other environments do you think would benefit from trying Scala, or are bashing Scala? C / C++ ? Node? Edit2: it seems Ruby or Python people wouldn't like Scala. Me, I like static typing.
- NickPollard 13y ago
  At a guess, base rate fallacy and typing. The java community is huge, so even a small percentage of happy scala converts translates into a large absolute number. People from dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) are probably averse to Static Typing which puts them off.
- koeninger 13y ago
  My team at a previous job went from perl / c / python to scala, and liked it better.
- lmm 13y ago
  I was a python guy before I found scala FWIW
fizx 13y ago
I've gone Ruby->Java->Scala->Java->Scala over the last five years. Scala was terrible two years ago. All the tools were broken, and every point release broke binary compatibility, so that jar dependency hell was amplified immensely. Now, there's things I don't like, but it all mostly just works. It seems like this started around 2.10. So I just appreciate a language that is more expressive than Java, with all the things I like about the jvm.

etrain 13y ago

I hear Java people say "I love scala" a lot. I do not hear people coming from other environments saying this.

kasey_junk 13y ago
I've come from lots of environments, and you're correct, I won't say "I love Scala". What I will say, is right now, if you are targeting the JVM there aren't any better alternatives (I believe in strong typing). Maybe someday Kotlin or Ceylon or Java 9 will be better but for now Scala is the best choice.
GFischer 13y ago
It certainly does sound like a step up from Java, while retaining most (all?) of the good things. Being a "better" alternative to Java (edit: as kasey says, targeting the JVM) doesn't sound like a bad place to be :) . It's on my "to-try" list but the little development I do nowadays is on the .NET platform. Which other environments do you think would benefit from trying Scala, or are bashing Scala? C / C++ ? Node? Edit2: it seems Ruby or Python people wouldn't like Scala. Me, I like static typing.
NickPollard 13y ago
At a guess, base rate fallacy and typing. The java community is huge, so even a small percentage of happy scala converts translates into a large absolute number. People from dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) are probably averse to Static Typing which puts them off.
koeninger 13y ago
My team at a previous job went from perl / c / python to scala, and liked it better.
lmm 13y ago
I was a python guy before I found scala FWIW

fizx 13y ago

I've gone Ruby->Java->Scala->Java->Scala over the last five years. Scala was terrible two years ago. All the tools were broken, and every point release broke binary compatibility, so that jar dependency hell was amplified immensely. Now, there's things I don't like, but it all mostly just works. It seems like this started around 2.10. So I just appreciate a language that is more expressive than Java, with all the things I like about the jvm.