Scala appeals to those who love programming languages. Java and a few other languages appeal to those who love making software, something that Scala is terrible at.
Actually not true. If you love making software you will probably use Scala without its esoteric features (for the better, imho) and you have a powerful and useful tool, yet very pleasant to work with.
Scala is a language of compromises. That's part of its success! I think it appeals to people who want to try out many different types of language styles, but the programming language purist in me hates it because it's not opinionated and is such a mish mash.
Scala tries to be everything at once, it's hardly a language of compromises. It was successful because when it was created Java sucked and now of course people are stuck with Scala deployments as nobody can decipher all that code. Java still sucks but less that it used to be. It needs type inference for like yesterday. The biggest drawback of the language is the slow toolchain.
I am opinionated and my opinion is that the more features in the language the better - as long as they're sanely organized, and not a mishmash of things hidden behind arcane syntax inventions. So right now I'm not too fond of Scala because of how messy it seems.
But I think it is complete BS to say that Scala isn't good for "making software". The two most successful projects of my career were relied heavily on Scala to deliver robust product on aggressive timescales, with teams largely composed of first-time Scala users.
pierrehenrit|9 years ago
watwut|9 years ago
century19|9 years ago
Apache Spark supports 4 languages: Scala, Java, Python and R. Most Spark applications are written in Scala.
yellowapple|9 years ago
nvarsj|9 years ago
camus2|9 years ago
Scala tries to be everything at once, it's hardly a language of compromises. It was successful because when it was created Java sucked and now of course people are stuck with Scala deployments as nobody can decipher all that code. Java still sucks but less that it used to be. It needs type inference for like yesterday. The biggest drawback of the language is the slow toolchain.
TeMPOraL|9 years ago
acjohnson55|9 years ago
But I think it is complete BS to say that Scala isn't good for "making software". The two most successful projects of my career were relied heavily on Scala to deliver robust product on aggressive timescales, with teams largely composed of first-time Scala users.
You can read one of the stories here: http://artsy.github.io/blog/2016/08/09/the-tech-behind-live-...
I'm not going to tell you that it's an easy language to master. But I do believe it is a fantastic language for making software.
unknown|9 years ago
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etrepen|9 years ago
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