4 ms·

This is not about disagreement. You keep making huge claims and sweeping generalizations based on a completely irrelevant version of Scala ("a few years ago" =

This is not about disagreement. You keep making huge claims and sweeping generalizations based on a completely irrelevant version of Scala ("a few years ago" == "not a version which would give any useful information to judge Scala today"), without being able to support any of it with even a glimpse of detail. At the same time, you come up with requirements where there is just no chance to actual fulfill them, e. g. bashing the language for both being not production-ready before 2.8 (is that even a point worth discussing?) and for rapidly improving on exactly these issues (OMG!!! It is changing too fast!). I think you should really make your mind up on these things, because you can't have it both ways. I'm saying this because this incoherent reasoning is constantly happening in your comments, it's not some isolated case.

pron 12y ago
> without being able to support any of it with even a glimpse of detail. I'm sorry, but you're just not getting it. I don't take issue with Scala's choice of square brackets over angled brackets. I take issue with the language philosophy and combined set of features. Here are the most detailed details: too many features, many of them overlapping (traits, structural types); too much complexity (type system, implicits); less readable; not enough constraints (e.g. immutability not enforced, casts allowed everywhere). That's as detailed as it gets. All in all, it came out benefits << cost. That's it. Either you don't want to understand or you think that when Boeing wants to write some big aircraft software thingy they say, "hmmm., the type inference is insufficient for our needs", or, "if only we had non-strict evaluation...". Because that's not how it works. In the industry languages are evaluated as a whole based on the project's criteria, with all their combined benefits weighed against their combined costs. This is what we've done. Scala came out lacking: too much overall cost for too little overall benefit. It was too complicated, too unconstraining, too unreadable, and too difficult to upgrade and build. What more do you want? > "not a version which would give any useful information to judge Scala today" No, I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong! I gave up on Scala some years ago, but I can still tell its evolution has been in the opposite direction from what we wanted. Since then the language has become even bigger, more complex, more obtuse (collections) and even less constraining (macros). Even if the build and upgrade issues are better, the PL research philosophy is still there and its effects are only worse than they were some years ago.
- frowaway001 12y ago
  This is so wrong, that I kind of start thinking you never even touched the language.
  - pron 12y ago
    And I wish I hadn't :) Just kidding. I don't think it's that terrible. And it does have some nice features that other, more industry-oriented languages have selectively adopted -- and will adopt in the future. I just find it utterly inappropriate for the kind of applications we're discussing.

pron 12y ago

> without being able to support any of it with even a glimpse of detail. I'm sorry, but you're just not getting it. I don't take issue with Scala's choice of square brackets over angled brackets. I take issue with the language philosophy and combined set of features. Here are the most detailed details: too many features, many of them overlapping (traits, structural types); too much complexity (type system, implicits); less readable; not enough constraints (e.g. immutability not enforced, casts allowed everywhere). That's as detailed as it gets. All in all, it came out benefits << cost. That's it. Either you don't want to understand or you think that when Boeing wants to write some big aircraft software thingy they say, "hmmm., the type inference is insufficient for our needs", or, "if only we had non-strict evaluation...". Because that's not how it works. In the industry languages are evaluated as a whole based on the project's criteria, with all their combined benefits weighed against their combined costs. This is what we've done. Scala came out lacking: too much overall cost for too little overall benefit. It was too complicated, too unconstraining, too unreadable, and too difficult to upgrade and build. What more do you want? > "not a version which would give any useful information to judge Scala today" No, I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong! I gave up on Scala some years ago, but I can still tell its evolution has been in the opposite direction from what we wanted. Since then the language has become even bigger, more complex, more obtuse (collections) and even less constraining (macros). Even if the build and upgrade issues are better, the PL research philosophy is still there and its effects are only worse than they were some years ago.

frowaway001 12y ago
This is so wrong, that I kind of start thinking you never even touched the language.
- pron 12y ago
  And I wish I hadn't :) Just kidding. I don't think it's that terrible. And it does have some nice features that other, more industry-oriented languages have selectively adopted -- and will adopt in the future. I just find it utterly inappropriate for the kind of applications we're discussing.