Scala books being published at quite a rate

capecoder.wordpress.com

20 pointsrabbitfang6 comments

I tried really hard to like Scala. I bought a few Scala books about the same time I also started buying Clojure books and put effort into learning both languages. For me, Clojure became a nice addition to using Java, Ruby, and Common Lisp. Scala didn't.

I hope that I don't sound lazy, but: Clojure was simply a lot less effort to get productive with.

Clojure brings a REPL, which is a huge bonus to productivity with the JVM ecosystem.

It also brings a simple syntax (verb stuff more stuff), and some easy ways to extend and interact with libraries such as SWING.

Scala also provides a REPL

It is certainly weird how this traffic of badly informed Lispers preaching their language in unrelated language topics has increased in the last few months...

Did some people just not get Rich Hickey's memo or are they unable to drop their old Common Lisp habits?

I found Scala to be much more similar to Java than Clojure. I guess it's a question of background. I haven't used LISP, so Clojure looks like Greek to me. Scala was much more natural for me to learn.

Working on a Scala book is probably be easier than improving the compiler, ecosystem, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com