mafribe

62 ms·

571.
by mafribe 11y ago
That depends on what you mean by tracking. Typesafe was founded in 2011. Scala really took off around 2013 in my entirely unscientific observation.
572.
by mafribe 11y ago
Scala's success has technical and socio-economical causes. Here are some more non-technical factors. - The existence of a reasonably well-funded organisation (Typesafe/Lightbend) stewarding Scala was well-received. - Typesafe&#x2F
573.
by mafribe 11y ago
> slow-ban I, too, can't post as many messages as I'd like. Not sure why, or how to change it, or how even to see if there's some limit imposed on me. Maybe < 1000 rep users are throttled? > Maybe they're not re
574.
by mafribe 11y ago
Quite a bit of Scala's design was influenced by the goal of Java/JVM compatibility. This was clearly a purely "socioeconomic" decision. Without this compromise, Scala would never have taken off.
575.
by mafribe 11y ago
I think understanding the expressivity of the DOT approach vis-a-vis the more conventional 1ML approach should be interesting. 1ML is based on F-omega, which has higher kinds but not dependent sums or products, while D_{<:} has path-depe
576.
by mafribe 11y ago
Regarding would get a lot more funding somebody once said that objects vs modules is like working class vs ruling class: objects do all the work, modules get all the credit. In case people were wondering, the 1ML project can be fou
577.
by mafribe 11y ago
I didn't say Scala represents the last word, I said it's a "successful marriage" of "ML-style functional languages with class-based OO". I implicitly assumed that subtyping is part of of class-based OO. I expec
578.
by mafribe 11y ago
Why would they keep it secret? I understand that they need to keep the low level details of their CPU secret, but a memory model? All it says is when/how reads and write commute. If a CPU manufacturer were to provide a nice, high-le
579.
by mafribe 11y ago
Depends on the criteria of success. Maybe OO and typed FP can be merged successfully in more than one way. I agree that that 1ML is interesting. Some of the warts come from JVM/Java compatibility. In what sense would you argue that OOP
580.
by mafribe 11y ago
I think you will find Scala relatively easy to learn since most Haskell concepts have Scala equivalents. If you want something much more Haskell-like on the JVM, check out Frege https://github.com/Frege/frege
581.
by mafribe 11y ago
Exceptions are probably the least canonical part of (the sequential part of) the ML-Scala continuum. Maybe it will fall by the wayside. With HKTs monadic error handling becomes relatively painless. I have no strong opinion on this matter. I
582.
by mafribe 11y ago
the core is sound I agree completely. It might be interesting to spell out what that this core is: it is the successful marriage of ML-style functional languages with class-based OO. The core idea of ML is this: strongly typed
583.
by mafribe 11y ago
advocating that beginners start using Scala No, I was talking about strong Java (or C# or C++) programmers learning Scala, starting with the OO part of Scala. Clearly this is not a large jump, as Scala has class-based OO that is re
584.
by mafribe 11y ago
Then my students would have been puzzled by Scheme, which they don't know. Incidentally, Scheme has a syntax too, so you need lexing and parsing to handle Scheme. The only advantage is that Scheme's syntax is simple. Moreover the
585.
by mafribe 11y ago
I agree with you that idealised compilers have a beautiful pipeline structure. Finding this structure Is one of the great achievement of the early computing pioneers. turn it into a laughably simple chain. By this reasoning, any com
586.
by mafribe 11y ago
In order to determine the meaning of a programming language, you need a platform independent memory model. This is increasingly important as CPUs are more and more concurrent and programming languages are exposing some of that concurrency t
587.
by mafribe 11y ago
nobody has put a real accurate model of an x86 That's a pretty good indication that there is a big problem. Deep at the heart of it is that processor designers don't quite understand the performance characteristics
588.
by mafribe 11y ago
Optimisations are easy only if you can accept the optimisation process to be slow, and/or the resulting code buggy.
589.
by mafribe 11y ago
compilers are easy No. Modern, industrial-strength compilers are some of the most complicated pieces of technology we have. Indeed almost every part of the compiler pipeline, in particular parsing, type-inference, and optimisations
590.
by mafribe 11y ago
That's exactly how I used to teach compilers. But the weaker students had a really hard time understanding the purpose of ASTs ("why don't you give the program to the code generator as a string?") no matter how often I p
591.
by mafribe 11y ago
I've found that Scala beginners google around, and come across lot's of blog posts extolling the virtues of Scalaz, implicits, using higher kinded types, embedding DSLs and so forth. All that is worthwhile, but not really accessib
592.
by mafribe 11y ago
I have asked tens of final year students to learn Scala for their final year projects, and pointed them towards Odersky's Coursera course. All my students liked the course, picked up Scala quickly, really enjoyed programming in Scala a
593.
by mafribe 11y ago
I have to agree with "lmm" and "the_af" here. You can use Scala as a "Java without semicolons", and indeed that's what I recommend to those who want to learn Scala coming form an OO background. There is ab
594.
by mafribe 11y ago
I strongly agree with you. School shouldn't take up too much time. The drive towards longer hours in schooling has little to do with improving learning, but more with (1) enabling (forcing) women to work and (2) equality, because the m
595.
by mafribe 11y ago
Play strength scales roughly with the log of computing power The rumor I have heard is that the new Deep Mind learning algorithm really improves on this and scales linearly with computing power.
596.
by mafribe 11y ago
Sure, but do schools do this? Moreover, some people cannot focus well in the presence of others (see also the complains about open-plan offices), and for them repetitive reinforcement just works better at home.
597.
by mafribe 11y ago
If indeed he said this, Einstein was wrong, he didn't understand, or think about computational complexity. To see how wrong, just consider the special case of guitar playing. In this instance what Einstein amounts to is: "never me
598.
by mafribe 11y ago
is there a role to play for homework in pushing through the hard part Yep, you got it exactly right. A N Whitehead has said it better than I can, so let's quote him: "Many think we should cultivate the habit of think
599.
by mafribe 11y ago
How do you reconcile your education as an area is incredibly cargo cult-filled. with your confidence in expressing we've known ... homework at that age was harmful Maybe what "we've known" wa
600.
by mafribe 11y ago
Good point. It requires a bit of social acuity to understand who's really focussed and doesn't want to be disturbed, and who'd be quite happy for a pleasant chat. An easy trick to gather intelligence on what they are doing be

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