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Basically I've seen this in person. Scala was driving the last startup I was in to the ground. The thing that fascinates me is scala is like an art. It's like

Basically I've seen this in person. Scala was driving the last startup I was in to the ground. The thing that fascinates me is scala is like an art. It's like a new Obfuscated Perl Contest, but for functional programming. It doesn't really serve a purpose in legitimate business. Scala code doesn't scale, it compiles too slow due to having too many features in the syntax. They took features normally meant for a standard library / external projects and literally augmented them into the syntax. Scala, in it's current form, is a pipe dream. It really needs to be start over, but drastically simplified. Perhaps it should try to take a hit from Golang for compiler time advice: Simple languages compile fast and are easier to optimize.

facorreia 11y ago
I would think that "people" were driving the company to the ground. I'm working on a large-scale Scala project that has been going on for years. The codebase is clean, methods are easy to reason about. It not as verbose as Java would be, there's no monkey-patching like you might see in Ruby, refactoring is much safer than it would be in JavaScript, and it runs on Linux much better than C# would. And thanks to FP the code is thread-safe and mostly free of side-effects (except where they're explicitly required). I wouldn't trade Scala for any other language, for this kind of work.
- bnejad 11y ago
  What kind of project is it? Genuinely curious.
  - facorreia 11y ago
    Web app with complex, distributed back-end processing.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  Is it an accident that you picked the worst offenders for each category? :) Not as verbose as Java -> Java is probably the most verbose compiled OOP language Refactoring is safer than it would be in JS -> I think with the IDEs this means almost nothing. Runs faster on Linux than C# -> I mean seriously, Java's biggest advertised feature was multi-platform support while we know that Redmond guys don't care about other platforms too much. I feel like you are trying to justify Scala by comparing it to other languages and picking a feature or property of those languages that is the worst or almost the worst. How about this: - Scala has such a nice type system that it blows out OCaml from the water - Scala running faster on Linux than C++ etc. I would expect honesty when it comes to using languages that would drive this twisted and wicked developer world to something better. If we keep using the worst languages to compare to we are not going to improve. This is what I think.
  - facorreia 11y ago
    It's a way of saying that I value a language that is not too verbose, that doesn't encourage monkey-patching, that has strong types, and that works on Linux without too much trouble. The languages I listed do not meet at least one of my requirements, that's why I prefer not to work with them.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Scala isn't the best at any of these things though. It's great because it's an all-rounder language. How about this: Scala doesn't - quite - have the safety and conciseness of Haskell. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the enterprise support and tooling infrastructure (monitoring/instrumentation, profiling, debugging, IDEs, library ecosystem) that Java does. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the clarity of Python. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the performance of C++. But it's close.
    - anon3_ 11y ago
      What scala does is sloppily bolt on everything without putting any checks or balances. I don't doubt your sincerity. Try to pull yourself out and understand it as an investor: $500 a day to pay for a scala engineer. Not a word about the bottom line. Python? Ruby? Are they algorithmically fast? No, but they ship and sell.
      - lmm 11y ago
        Depends what you're making. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html can apply - what I'm working on right now with Spark I dread to think how you'd do reliably in any other language. > $500 a day to pay for a scala engineer. Not a word about the bottom line. Maybe - I don't make that much and I have 5 years' Scala experience. (I have a relaxed environment and great culture though, so I'm not complaining). What I really don't get is Java companies where developers are chomping at the bit to use Scala and management says no - your devs are volunteering to become devs that companies would pay 2x for, the least you can do is let them.
      - 11y ago

facorreia 11y ago

I would think that "people" were driving the company to the ground. I'm working on a large-scale Scala project that has been going on for years. The codebase is clean, methods are easy to reason about. It not as verbose as Java would be, there's no monkey-patching like you might see in Ruby, refactoring is much safer than it would be in JavaScript, and it runs on Linux much better than C# would. And thanks to FP the code is thread-safe and mostly free of side-effects (except where they're explicitly required). I wouldn't trade Scala for any other language, for this kind of work.

bnejad 11y ago
What kind of project is it? Genuinely curious.
- facorreia 11y ago
  Web app with complex, distributed back-end processing.
istvan__ 11y ago
Is it an accident that you picked the worst offenders for each category? :) Not as verbose as Java -> Java is probably the most verbose compiled OOP language Refactoring is safer than it would be in JS -> I think with the IDEs this means almost nothing. Runs faster on Linux than C# -> I mean seriously, Java's biggest advertised feature was multi-platform support while we know that Redmond guys don't care about other platforms too much. I feel like you are trying to justify Scala by comparing it to other languages and picking a feature or property of those languages that is the worst or almost the worst. How about this: - Scala has such a nice type system that it blows out OCaml from the water - Scala running faster on Linux than C++ etc. I would expect honesty when it comes to using languages that would drive this twisted and wicked developer world to something better. If we keep using the worst languages to compare to we are not going to improve. This is what I think.
- facorreia 11y ago
  It's a way of saying that I value a language that is not too verbose, that doesn't encourage monkey-patching, that has strong types, and that works on Linux without too much trouble. The languages I listed do not meet at least one of my requirements, that's why I prefer not to work with them.
- lmm 11y ago
  Scala isn't the best at any of these things though. It's great because it's an all-rounder language. How about this: Scala doesn't - quite - have the safety and conciseness of Haskell. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the enterprise support and tooling infrastructure (monitoring/instrumentation, profiling, debugging, IDEs, library ecosystem) that Java does. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the clarity of Python. But it's close. Scala doesn't - quite - have the performance of C++. But it's close.
  - anon3_ 11y ago
    What scala does is sloppily bolt on everything without putting any checks or balances. I don't doubt your sincerity. Try to pull yourself out and understand it as an investor: $500 a day to pay for a scala engineer. Not a word about the bottom line. Python? Ruby? Are they algorithmically fast? No, but they ship and sell.
    - lmm 11y ago
      Depends what you're making. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html can apply - what I'm working on right now with Spark I dread to think how you'd do reliably in any other language. > $500 a day to pay for a scala engineer. Not a word about the bottom line. Maybe - I don't make that much and I have 5 years' Scala experience. (I have a relaxed environment and great culture though, so I'm not complaining). What I really don't get is Java companies where developers are chomping at the bit to use Scala and management says no - your devs are volunteering to become devs that companies would pay 2x for, the least you can do is let them.
    - 11y ago