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I would use Java 7 rather than Scala in production environment. There are different reasons, some actually concern language features but one of the biggest is I

I would use Java 7 rather than Scala in production environment. There are different reasons, some actually concern language features but one of the biggest is IntelliJ's capability as Java IDE. It blows away all of the other alternatives as efficient way of creating readable code that is breeze to refactor. Even though Java lacks features that make life easier, the lack of features is important, too. And as a former Scala enthusiast (when it was not so hot), I just dislike Scala's monstrosity. I have high hopes for Kotlin because it has some advanced stuff that have been clearly included by the experience of using Scala. And it in all likelihood will have very good IntelliJ interop, because JetBrains. I don't get it why people fuzz over languages without a context of tools.

pjmlp 13y ago
> I don't get it why people fuzz over languages without a context of tools. Because many rather stay in 1970 era of PDP11 command line and text editors and never experienced with the 1960 ideas implemented in Xerox PARC 1970 languages and 1980 GUI environments.
- lucian1900 13y ago
  I'd rather experience 60s and 80s language (Lisp, ML/Haskell) than something like C or Java, even if I have to put up with a text editor. I'd really much rather get both, I want AST editors in the spirit of paredit.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    My point was about Interlisp, Smalltalk, Cedar and their respective environments. A plain text editor cannot reproduce the live code experience from such environments.
virtualwhys 13y ago
Scala tooling has improved hugely, just look at the Scala IDE and the IntelliJ Scala plugin now vs. 2 years ago. The only area where I have ongoing issues with my IDE (Scala IDE) is with the play template plugin, can really wreak havoc in both template and controller layers with spurious errors that break mouse-hover type inference click-through-to-type functionality. Even here there's been a ton of improvement, 2 years ago in the template layer there was no semantic highlighting, no indication of _valid_ errors, and stack trace error lines pointed to lines in the generated template, not the .scala.html source file, fun times o_O Recently switched to XML literals in place of Play's @ templates, not surprisingly the above issue has disappeared, and am now left with a fully functional IDE, code completion, refactoring, and the all the rest, pretty thrilled about the IDE story in Scala to be honest.
- AhmedSoliman 13y ago
  I +1 that, the tooling of Scala is comparable to what is available to Python and Ruby developers, given that building a proper IDE for such language is not a simple task, but right now Scala IDE (eclipse-based) and Intellij IDEA's support is more than satisfying to me.
bad_user 13y ago
"Production environment" is a very relative and subjective notion. We used Scala on the server-side for basically real-time bidding, with the servers receiving several thousands of requests per second per server instance, with a total of about 30,000 reqs per sec of real traffic coming in, to which we had to reply in a maximum of 100ms which included the network roundtrip. Without Scala, without the ease with which I could juggle with concurrency issues and asynchronous processing of streams, I couldn't have pulled it off. So in other words, Java is unfit for a production environment from my perspective. > one of the biggest is IntelliJ's capability as Java IDE That's a pretty shallow reason if you ask me, because the speed of writing code is not the point and IntelliJ IDEA 13 is also very, very good for Scala development. > I just dislike Scala's monstrosity. I have high hopes for Kotlin Well, there's your problem. You thought that Scala is something that it isn't, like a "better Java". If you approached it like that, without delving in its FP capabilities that Java 8, Kotlin, Ceylon, Groovy cannot match (or whatever "better Java" is the fad du jour), then of course it was a bad experience. Next time you'll have some time to burn, start here: http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/ http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/
- thescrewdriver 13y ago
  Scala support in IntelliJ is superb. I maintain legacy Java code and newer Scala code in IntelliJ and the Scala plugin is excellent.
  - jghn 13y ago
    It's much, much better than it used to be but it is still not as good as the Java support. I write both in my day job and while I much prefer scala, anyone who feels that IntelliJ's scala support is equal to java is deluding themselves. At least a few times a day I come across something where I start shaking my fist at the IDE over something which would Just Work for java. That said, it is improving and closing the gap rapidly.
    - thescrewdriver 13y ago
      Perhaps you're using more of the IDE features than I am. I spend most of my day in IntelliJ writing Scala code (and a bit less maintaining old Java code) and haven't spotted any major issues with the features that I use.
lmm 13y ago
If you're talking about tool availability and production readiness then I think Scala has the advantage over Kotlin. By the time Kotlin reaches a similar level of maturity, how many features will it have that haven't found their way into Java? (I don't think Scala's a thousand-year language, but I think Kotlin drops too much of what makes it good; I'd look to the likes of Ermine as a potential future replacement. But more to the point, Scala is production-ready today - I know because I use it in production)

pjmlp 13y ago

> I don't get it why people fuzz over languages without a context of tools. Because many rather stay in 1970 era of PDP11 command line and text editors and never experienced with the 1960 ideas implemented in Xerox PARC 1970 languages and 1980 GUI environments.

lucian1900 13y ago
I'd rather experience 60s and 80s language (Lisp, ML/Haskell) than something like C or Java, even if I have to put up with a text editor. I'd really much rather get both, I want AST editors in the spirit of paredit.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  My point was about Interlisp, Smalltalk, Cedar and their respective environments. A plain text editor cannot reproduce the live code experience from such environments.

virtualwhys 13y ago

Scala tooling has improved hugely, just look at the Scala IDE and the IntelliJ Scala plugin now vs. 2 years ago. The only area where I have ongoing issues with my IDE (Scala IDE) is with the play template plugin, can really wreak havoc in both template and controller layers with spurious errors that break mouse-hover type inference click-through-to-type functionality. Even here there's been a ton of improvement, 2 years ago in the template layer there was no semantic highlighting, no indication of _valid_ errors, and stack trace error lines pointed to lines in the generated template, not the .scala.html source file, fun times o_O Recently switched to XML literals in place of Play's @ templates, not surprisingly the above issue has disappeared, and am now left with a fully functional IDE, code completion, refactoring, and the all the rest, pretty thrilled about the IDE story in Scala to be honest.

AhmedSoliman 13y ago
I +1 that, the tooling of Scala is comparable to what is available to Python and Ruby developers, given that building a proper IDE for such language is not a simple task, but right now Scala IDE (eclipse-based) and Intellij IDEA's support is more than satisfying to me.

bad_user 13y ago

"Production environment" is a very relative and subjective notion. We used Scala on the server-side for basically real-time bidding, with the servers receiving several thousands of requests per second per server instance, with a total of about 30,000 reqs per sec of real traffic coming in, to which we had to reply in a maximum of 100ms which included the network roundtrip. Without Scala, without the ease with which I could juggle with concurrency issues and asynchronous processing of streams, I couldn't have pulled it off. So in other words, Java is unfit for a production environment from my perspective. > one of the biggest is IntelliJ's capability as Java IDE That's a pretty shallow reason if you ask me, because the speed of writing code is not the point and IntelliJ IDEA 13 is also very, very good for Scala development. > I just dislike Scala's monstrosity. I have high hopes for Kotlin Well, there's your problem. You thought that Scala is something that it isn't, like a "better Java". If you approached it like that, without delving in its FP capabilities that Java 8, Kotlin, Ceylon, Groovy cannot match (or whatever "better Java" is the fad du jour), then of course it was a bad experience. Next time you'll have some time to burn, start here: http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/ http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/

thescrewdriver 13y ago
Scala support in IntelliJ is superb. I maintain legacy Java code and newer Scala code in IntelliJ and the Scala plugin is excellent.
- jghn 13y ago
  It's much, much better than it used to be but it is still not as good as the Java support. I write both in my day job and while I much prefer scala, anyone who feels that IntelliJ's scala support is equal to java is deluding themselves. At least a few times a day I come across something where I start shaking my fist at the IDE over something which would Just Work for java. That said, it is improving and closing the gap rapidly.
  - thescrewdriver 13y ago
    Perhaps you're using more of the IDE features than I am. I spend most of my day in IntelliJ writing Scala code (and a bit less maintaining old Java code) and haven't spotted any major issues with the features that I use.

lmm 13y ago

If you're talking about tool availability and production readiness then I think Scala has the advantage over Kotlin. By the time Kotlin reaches a similar level of maturity, how many features will it have that haven't found their way into Java? (I don't think Scala's a thousand-year language, but I think Kotlin drops too much of what makes it good; I'd look to the likes of Ermine as a potential future replacement. But more to the point, Scala is production-ready today - I know because I use it in production)