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A comment on A Year Of Scala. Parent comment

Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @03:36PM (#2041133)
Please point out the "shortcomings" of Java. It has done quite well and provably "scales" from programming in the small to enterprise level. Even the required detour of multi-core resulted in the industry's gold standard of memory models: JMM.

"Much smaller language specification" is a red herring. The issue is (practical) comprehension.

"C was a well designed language that was later added onto haphazardly and you ended up with C++."

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Evolution-C-Bjarne-Stroustrup/d...

I've read that book. (Have you?) Nothing "haphazard" about C++.

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Re:A Year Of Scala by code_duck on Sunday December 26, 2010 @03:58PM (#2041158)
I consider verbosity and lack of closures to be shortcomings of Java. Apparently, so did the author of the article here.
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Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @05:35PM (#2041297)
Its perfectly fine to note that Java can be verbose and that it does not fully support closures. It is perfectly fine to consider these "shortcomings".

However, in context of OP's comment above, the strong suggestion made was that shorcoming == poorly designed.

And that is a completely wrong assessment of Java and its designers. It is an exceptionally well thought out system and language. Again, the proof is in the pudding. Google and Oracle are not fighting over scala ...

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Re:A Year Of Scala by jimbokun on Sunday December 26, 2010 @05:55PM (#2041328)
If issues such as verbosity and whether or not to have closures are not part of the language design process, then what is?
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Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @06:48PM (#2041398)
That is a non sequitur.

A language designer must make choices. 2 choices have been identified as "shortcomings" (in the sense of this thread). Empirical evidence suggests that they indeed picked a very productive sweet spot.

As an aside, the current disfavor of "crowds" for Java is all together too familiar to the past fervor of "crowds" for Java. You may wish to reflect on that.

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Re:A Year Of Scala by jimbokun on Sunday December 26, 2010 @08:14PM (#2041534)
"Empirical evidence suggests that they indeed picked a very productive sweet spot."

You seem to be arguing that popularity and quality are synonymous. I do not think that is a very useful way to evaluate programming languages.

Do you have actual data showing productivity gains for using Java over Scala or other languages that run on the JVM? How about Java and non-JVM languages? Even anecdotal evidence? You are advocating for empirical evidence, but are not providing much in this discussion that I can see.

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Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @09:12PM (#2041632)
"You seem to be arguing that popularity and quality are synonymous. I do not think that is a very useful way to evaluate programming languages."

No. And yes, of course. (Java is not exactly "popular" these days.)

"Do you have actual data showing productivity gains for using Java over Scala or other languages that run on the JVM?"

Do you have actual data from a study that shows such studies are worth their virtual ink? Cite it, please. Lets pretend we have an actual market economy in this country: How many businesses have shot themselves in the foot with Java? How many have bet the farm (IBM, Oracle, even Google has hedged on this tech) on Java? Are they all idiots who do not appreciate the grave "shortcomings" of Java and its impact on the "productivity" of their workers ants? Are you kidding me?

"You are advocating for empirical evidence, but are not providing much in this discussion that I can see."

One needs to point out the overwhelming presence of Java in OSS? Well, consider it pointed out. Pretty darn good showing for a language with such serious "shortcomings".

Anecdotal? Have been programming since 16. That was 30 years ago. Have done/seen enough to have a reasonably informed opinion regarding languages. Everyone of them has its set of issues. Java included. But it is actually one of the most productive languages I have worked with to date.

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Re:A Year Of Scala by runT1ME on Sunday December 26, 2010 @10:04PM (#2041716)
>but it is actually one of the most productive languages I have worked with to date.

Because of the language design, or because of the libraries and the jvm (GC, the fact that it's bytecode, etc)?

Do you think Scala would make you less productive?

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Re:A Year Of Scala by somnium on Sunday December 26, 2010 @07:09PM (#2041430)
They're not fighting over Java, they're fighting over the JVM. Java isn't worth fighting over.
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Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @09:15PM (#2041639)
The fact remains that the JVM was designed for Java and mirrors its semantics.

The "shortcoming" of Java is due to none other than the JVM:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/DynTypeLang/...

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Re:A Year Of Scala by runT1ME on Sunday December 26, 2010 @10:06PM (#2041724)
Shortcomings: Generics. Lack of closures. Please tell me how those are not shortcomings.

>Even the required detour of multi-core resulted in the industry's gold standard of memory models: JMM.

Which has absolutely zero to do with java the language. Did you forget what we were talking about in your second sentence?

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Re:A Year Of Scala by sharednothing on Sunday December 26, 2010 @10:16PM (#2041734)
We were discussing the "mistakes" made by the Java design team. JMM is one of their products. It is relevant to mention this fact as it supports the claim that the responsible parties have generally been also quite brilliant folks.
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