27 ms·

There are similarities, of course, as you could expect from any modern language (i.e. created in the 21st century) but if there is something noteworthy about al

There are similarities, of course, as you could expect from any modern language (i.e. created in the 21st century) but if there is something noteworthy about all the recent languages that came out these past years (Kotlin, Ceylon, Swift, Fantom, Gosu), it's not how much they look like Scala but all the features from Scala that they left out. The Scala experiment produced a lot of interesting results and added a lot of clarity about what features are interesting in a modern language (property, lambda, extension methods, sum/union types, and a few others) but the complexity of Scala's type system and the uncertain shape of its code base (see Paul Phillips' talks) is demonstrating that it's often wise to support fewer features rather than be a kitchen-and-sink language. I am very excited by this trend of minimalism in languages and the willingness from language designers to say "Interesting feature but it will add too much complexity, so I'm not adding it". Best of luck to Swift, and I can't wait to see if a language will finally emerge on the JVM to supplant Java (even though this might take a solid decade).

virtualwhys 12y ago
The Scala experiment, as you say, seems to be kicking some serious tail, no need to speak of it in the past tense ;-) Big companies are adopting Scala (Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, Yahoo, Sony, and so on), not surprising given Spark, Spire, Akka, Play, etc. The Scala language itself is certainly not without problems; at this point the ecosystem behind it is arguably its greatest strength. Rest assured, if there is a language that will supplant Java on the JVM (highly unlikely in the near-term), it will be Scala (or some variant [Dotty] thereof). Ceylon's got a shot but they're a bit late to the party, and Kotlin isn't even 1.0 yet (Java 8 and 9 will punish that project's adoption, IMO).
- zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
  > Rest assured, if there is a language that will supplant Java on the JVM (highly unlikely in the near-term), it will be Scala Not sure why you're so confident since Scala has gained about 2% mind share in ten years of existence and it's still all but impossible to find Scala jobs, but hey, if you like it, good for you.
  - frowaway001 12y ago
    Wow, you are really getting desperate. Don't have anything better to do than trying to troll about a topic you barely understand?
  - thescrewdriver 12y ago
    It isn't too tricky finding places use Scala. Most of my dev work is done in Scala.

virtualwhys 12y ago

The Scala experiment, as you say, seems to be kicking some serious tail, no need to speak of it in the past tense ;-) Big companies are adopting Scala (Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, Yahoo, Sony, and so on), not surprising given Spark, Spire, Akka, Play, etc. The Scala language itself is certainly not without problems; at this point the ecosystem behind it is arguably its greatest strength. Rest assured, if there is a language that will supplant Java on the JVM (highly unlikely in the near-term), it will be Scala (or some variant [Dotty] thereof). Ceylon's got a shot but they're a bit late to the party, and Kotlin isn't even 1.0 yet (Java 8 and 9 will punish that project's adoption, IMO).

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
> Rest assured, if there is a language that will supplant Java on the JVM (highly unlikely in the near-term), it will be Scala Not sure why you're so confident since Scala has gained about 2% mind share in ten years of existence and it's still all but impossible to find Scala jobs, but hey, if you like it, good for you.
- frowaway001 12y ago
  Wow, you are really getting desperate. Don't have anything better to do than trying to troll about a topic you barely understand?
- thescrewdriver 12y ago
  It isn't too tricky finding places use Scala. Most of my dev work is done in Scala.