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kvtrew76557on Top 100 Most Popular Scala Libraries – Based on 10,000 GitHub Projects

The Scala projects I've seen are not open-source, but some very interesting work being done in Scala in systems that might surprise you...

kvtrew76557on Top 100 Most Popular Scala Libraries – Based on 10,000 GitHub Projects

Twitter has some nice Scala libraries too: https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects?tags%5B%...

kvtrew76557on Top 100 Most Popular Scala Libraries – Based on 10,000 GitHub Projects

I'm glad to see that Spring, which features heavily in the Java top 100, doesn't even make the top 100 for Scala. In my experience many Scala developers were previously Java developers. It's rather telling that they are choosing to ditch the needless complexity of Spring.

kvtrew76557on Clojure vs. Scala

Perhaps I'm missing something about Clojure, but it looks completely and utterly foreign. As someone who didn't have much trouble learning a "complex" language like Scala I find Clojure really hard to fathom.

kvtrew76557on Why use Clojure?

Good question. Unlike most languages with which I am not yet familiar, Clojure looks like Greek. Most languages are at least somewhat readable. Perhaps I need to know Lisp to appreciate Clojure. Coming from a Java/Scala/Ruby/Python/Haskell/Pascal/C# background. I can't make head or tail of Clojure examples. It might as well be encrypted. To those who are using Clojure, which previous languages enabled you to make sense of Clojure more easily? Or was it something you learned from scratch?

kvtrew76557on Java SE 8 Proposed Final Draft Specification — Draft 1

Still quite far behind what is provided by C# and Scala, among others. At least it's a step in the right direction. These are the first major language changes to Java in nearly a decade, say what you like about Oracle, but at least they have the funds to develop Java whereas Sun was running on empty.

kvtrew76557on Side-by-side comparison of AWS, Google Compute Engine and Rackspace

It's a pity the article didn't get more attention.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

Play 2: Great except it's Scala. Ruled out.

The Play guys went to great trouble to ensure that both Java and Scala are fully supported. Perhaps consider being a bit more open-minded about your options. Scala is simply a more modern and flexible language, so I don't blame them for using it.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

I'm currently deciding between learning Rust or Nimrod, having a good web framework would help Nimrod adoption.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

A Lisp family language is hardly more approachable than Scala. I found Java -> Scala pretty smooth, but can't make head or tail of Clojure code as it looks completely different to languages I've used before.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

I'd also like to see Nimrod in the results.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

The first PHP result for the JSON test comes in at 31.7% of the performance of the top performer. PHP also occupies the bottom 3 worst slots.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

Rails fairs badly across the board. I'm afraid you're the one who's "lazily" linking in this case. Of course you can have good latency if you instantly 500, and process far fewer requests than the competition.

kvtrew76557on Web Framework Benchmarks - Round 8

The numbers vary greatly, depending on which test you look at.

In the plaintext search Go only comes in at 13th: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7...

kvtrew76557on Scala's Maturing Community

It's been good to see the growth in the Scala community on many fronts. The Scala subreddit is starting to get quite lively. I've also encountering more developers using Scala at work rather than just something they use for side projects.

The article does raise a good point about immutability and functional programming. It's something that shouldn't be assumed, especially for Java developers making the transition (there seem to be plenty of Java developers switching to Scala lately). Scala combines functional and OO programming, and there are use cases where OO style coding makes more sense. Martin Odersky even mentioned that in a presentation a while back. Immutability and asyc are very powerful, but not everyone uses these approaches. Selling folks on Scala is one thing, getting them to make a jump to an (awesome) library like Akka is a bit too big a jump to make in one step.

kvtrew76557on IntelliJ IDEA 13 is Released

I've also been using IntelliJ for various large projects written in Scala, currently on the fence deciding whether upgrading to 13 worthwhile. Really hoping for an upgrade discount for all those who purchased IntelliJ in the "end of the world" sale last year. I also wish they'd add better support for profiling and heap dump analysis.

kvtrew76557on Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

Overall this is a very weak and one-sided blog post. Even a simple search would have answered his questions about why Scala doesn't use Hindley Milner type inference:

http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/4654

How this post got voted up to the front page really makes me wonder. "Clojure programmer gives Scala 1 star", what next "Ruby programmer gives Python 1 star"?

kvtrew76557on Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

I happen to like Go, but the excessive marketing of Go on HN as a solution to every "problem" is tiresome.

kvtrew76557on Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

Unlike you I finished reading the Odersky book and am very easily "Getting Shit Done" much faster than I ever did in Ruby. It did take effort to learn the language, but it was worth it. Having apps running an order of magnitude faster with better response times is just icing on the cake. Perhaps consider getting a gentler introduction to the language, the Odersky book is rather long and goes into excessive detail about obscure corners of the language you will seldom ever see in a production system.

kvtrew76557on Go 1.2 is released

Have the GC issues been resolved yet (particularly on 32 bit)?

kvtrew76557on Scala – 1 Star – Would Not Program Again

I've developed and maintained multiple large systems in a team using various languages. I would much rather maintain a system written in Scala than either Java or various scripting languages we've used and the view is shared by the whole team. It's far less verbose than Java and very maintainable compared to other very large systems written in scripting languages.

kvtrew76557on Jolla CEO: You will soon be able turn your Android device into a Sailfish device

Google seems to have really lost the plot lately, forcing their policies and updates down our throats.

kvtrew76557on Choosing Scala

I'm rather excited about Nimrod, it actually looks a bit like Scala (pascal-style declarations). Scala has a lot of appeal for (most) organizations where the JVM is very widely used. I guess I tend to look at things from the position of a software engineer rather than from a teaching perspective. I'm really hoping that Nimrod gets a lot of traction (don't want it turning into a D).

kvtrew76557on Choosing Scala

As a software engineer I find Scala to be a very powerful tool, but one which takes some time to learn. I could see it being a useful teaching tool if they stay away from obscure corners of the language. I'm glad that they didn't go with Java, but I'd only go with Scala if the students are a sharp bunch. Python would also have been a suitable choice.