4 ms·

(Scala tech lead at Typesafe here) > Scala had its time, and I was a frequent user, but now I am not sure where it is going. It certainly helped bring function

(Scala tech lead at Typesafe here) > Scala had its time, and I was a frequent user, but now I am not sure where it is going. It certainly helped bring functional programming into my vocabulary, and into a lot of other developers' too. But I get the impression that it tries to appease to many different notions, and lacks a core guiding principle. (In a more positive light: it is more democratic). You sure piqued my interest there! Could you elaborate? Why do you say you don't know where Scala is going? Our roadmap is intended to be pretty simple: stability + full Java 8 support. Our guiding principle is to make sure your investment in your Scala codebase is safe in the long term, which entails a tricky balance between stability and getting rid of stuff that turned out not to work that well (we do this slowly, though still much faster than Java). I'm glad you feel we're more democratic. We certainly try to be transparent in what we decide to work on as a company (which implies the community is welcome to pick up our slack, and we do try to help out where we can -- see e.g., the Typelevel fork).

hrjet 12y ago
Thanks for your response. I appreciate all the work going into the Scala ecosystem. > Why do you say you don't know where Scala is going? Apologies for that wording. A more elaborate wording would be: I don't know where Scala as a whole (the community + language) will be heading and that is in huge part because of I not having the resources to follow the developments. I sometimes lurk in the internal discussions list and catch up with conversations, some of which tend to be controversial, but I am glad they happen in the open. (Top of mind: CPS plugin related discussions) I still use Scala whenever I can, but when it comes to performance (cpu limited), I fall back to Java. (I am aware of the compiler plugins of yore and the macros of now that help speed things, and the tree shakers, but they are third-party / require different workflows, and hence I don't feel inclined to use them for certain projects). It is mostly in this space that I am exploring alternatives. Kotlin and Ceylon seem to be more streamlined (conceptually, and hopefully at run-time), but as I haven't actually used them, I am not sure what deficiencies to expect. Edit: Removed a sidenote. Would have been a distraction.
- adriaanm 12y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I understand your concern. The Scala side of our commercial offering aims to alleviate those worries. Please get in touch if you'd like more details on that.
teacup50 12y ago
> Why do you say you don't know where Scala is going? Our roadmap is intended to be pretty simple: stability + full Java 8 support. Given that I hit serious, show-stopping Scala compiler bugs at least once every few weeks -- bugs that always have already been filed and simply haven't been fixed -- and that Scala binary compatibility across major releases is still a pipe dream, and that massive language warts don't seem to be going anywhere ... ... I'm not really seeing how that roadmap and reality come together. I've got a smidgeon of hope for the two Scala forks, but I know that's a long shot. -- fulltime scala user
- adriaanm 12y ago
  Sorry to hear that. It's a lot of work and the Scala team at Typesafe is pretty small. We welcome all the help we can get, but we're focussed on solving exactly these issues. If you'd like to get certain bugs prioritized -- we offer dev support.

hrjet 12y ago

Thanks for your response. I appreciate all the work going into the Scala ecosystem. > Why do you say you don't know where Scala is going? Apologies for that wording. A more elaborate wording would be: I don't know where Scala as a whole (the community + language) will be heading and that is in huge part because of I not having the resources to follow the developments. I sometimes lurk in the internal discussions list and catch up with conversations, some of which tend to be controversial, but I am glad they happen in the open. (Top of mind: CPS plugin related discussions) I still use Scala whenever I can, but when it comes to performance (cpu limited), I fall back to Java. (I am aware of the compiler plugins of yore and the macros of now that help speed things, and the tree shakers, but they are third-party / require different workflows, and hence I don't feel inclined to use them for certain projects). It is mostly in this space that I am exploring alternatives. Kotlin and Ceylon seem to be more streamlined (conceptually, and hopefully at run-time), but as I haven't actually used them, I am not sure what deficiencies to expect. Edit: Removed a sidenote. Would have been a distraction.

adriaanm 12y ago
Thanks for clarifying. I understand your concern. The Scala side of our commercial offering aims to alleviate those worries. Please get in touch if you'd like more details on that.

teacup50 12y ago

> Why do you say you don't know where Scala is going? Our roadmap is intended to be pretty simple: stability + full Java 8 support. Given that I hit serious, show-stopping Scala compiler bugs at least once every few weeks -- bugs that always have already been filed and simply haven't been fixed -- and that Scala binary compatibility across major releases is still a pipe dream, and that massive language warts don't seem to be going anywhere ... ... I'm not really seeing how that roadmap and reality come together. I've got a smidgeon of hope for the two Scala forks, but I know that's a long shot. -- fulltime scala user

adriaanm 12y ago
Sorry to hear that. It's a lot of work and the Scala team at Typesafe is pretty small. We welcome all the help we can get, but we're focussed on solving exactly these issues. If you'd like to get certain bugs prioritized -- we offer dev support.