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Comment by stevewepay | Hacker News Reader

Are there any risks to adopting Scala as a language for a project knowing that it will change over the next few years? It sounds like as opposed to an evolution, they are going to change the language itself, which sounds like backwards incompatibility and refactors within a few short years if you don't want to be considered legacy.

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No, not really.

There might be a few changes, but probably nothing which can't be fixed automatically by a tool/IDE. (They are investing in that currently.)

Additionally, if your code compiles with version X without warnings, it should compile with version X+1, too. (Otherwise that would be a bug.)

Apart from that, stable versions are supported for a long time, so just like in Java you can migrate when you feel comfortable with it.

If stable longevity for your project's implementation is important (as your question implies), then I think Scala does present additional risk (relative to stable/mainstream languages). It sounds to me, too, that they are thinking of changing fundamentals in the language/system. This could lead to something like the Python2vs3 scenario for a while. If you base on current Scala, you might (likely) later find yourself doing either a re-write, or being relegated to a "compatibility" library. You're wise to ask.

It depends on what you're doing. If you're really pushing forward with experimental features, sure, there's some risk. But if you're using common libraries, you probably have more to worry about staying up to date with the library interfaces than the language changes.

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