<story><title>Scala: Where it came from, Where it&apos;s going</title><url>http://www.slideshare.net/Odersky/scala-days-san-francisco-45917092</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>azinman2</author><text>Funny to see people defending the complexity of the language in these comments. So very HN.&lt;p&gt;My perspective of dev&amp;#x27;ing in scala since 2009 (and I love scala):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Scala isn&amp;#x27;t that complicated, just takes some time to learn.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Scala is complicated. Like really potentially super complicated, and the compiler error messages can be hyper-cryptic. It was written by academics (versus &amp;quot;developers&amp;quot;) and it shows.&lt;p&gt;New developers will end up asking someone else a basic language question about every 10 minutes, mostly because they don&amp;#x27;t even know what to google for.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been using it for years and I still have to lookup prepending versus appending to lists because I can&amp;#x27;t remember if it&amp;#x27;s x :+= y  or x +:= y, let alone ::: versus :: versus ++ or ++=.   Really? Why not #!:@## while we&amp;#x27;re at it?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s crazy that in these slides he says &amp;quot;I wanted a hipster language&amp;quot; -- most languages use [] for arrays so I used (). WHY!!!!? Just to be different? No actual real advantage? That&amp;#x27;s a terrible reason and a great way to make it hard for new people to adopt your language.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t help that there are 50 ways to do the same thing and the language is totally agnostic as to what you should do. It&amp;#x27;s almost like being an alien, coming to Earth, and trying to learn to have sex with humans from someone who is bi-sexual and into every fetish there is.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;It would be really great if they could canonicalize the language in the way that python has, and once having done so further simplify their syntax so mere mortals can use it effectively. Programming is hard enough without the language being difficult, too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frowaway001</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    It&amp;#x27;s crazy that in these slides he says &amp;quot;I wanted a
    hipster language&amp;quot; -- most languages use [] for arrays so I 
    used (). WHY!!!!? Just to be different? No actual real 
    advantage? That&amp;#x27;s a terrible reason and a great way to 
    make it hard for new people to adopt your language.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
You might not get it, but the slide makes fun of knee-jerk reactions like those shown in your comment.&lt;p&gt;Scala does things for a good reason. Not caring to figure out the reason doesn&amp;#x27;t mean the language is wrong.</text></comment>
<story><title>Scala: Where it came from, Where it&apos;s going</title><url>http://www.slideshare.net/Odersky/scala-days-san-francisco-45917092</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>azinman2</author><text>Funny to see people defending the complexity of the language in these comments. So very HN.&lt;p&gt;My perspective of dev&amp;#x27;ing in scala since 2009 (and I love scala):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Scala isn&amp;#x27;t that complicated, just takes some time to learn.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Scala is complicated. Like really potentially super complicated, and the compiler error messages can be hyper-cryptic. It was written by academics (versus &amp;quot;developers&amp;quot;) and it shows.&lt;p&gt;New developers will end up asking someone else a basic language question about every 10 minutes, mostly because they don&amp;#x27;t even know what to google for.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been using it for years and I still have to lookup prepending versus appending to lists because I can&amp;#x27;t remember if it&amp;#x27;s x :+= y  or x +:= y, let alone ::: versus :: versus ++ or ++=.   Really? Why not #!:@## while we&amp;#x27;re at it?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s crazy that in these slides he says &amp;quot;I wanted a hipster language&amp;quot; -- most languages use [] for arrays so I used (). WHY!!!!? Just to be different? No actual real advantage? That&amp;#x27;s a terrible reason and a great way to make it hard for new people to adopt your language.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t help that there are 50 ways to do the same thing and the language is totally agnostic as to what you should do. It&amp;#x27;s almost like being an alien, coming to Earth, and trying to learn to have sex with humans from someone who is bi-sexual and into every fetish there is.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;It would be really great if they could canonicalize the language in the way that python has, and once having done so further simplify their syntax so mere mortals can use it effectively. Programming is hard enough without the language being difficult, too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eklavya</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s crazy that in these slides he says &amp;quot;I wanted a hipster language&amp;quot; -- most languages use [] for arrays so I used (). WHY!!!!? Just to be different? No actual real advantage? That&amp;#x27;s a terrible reason and a great way to make it hard for new people to adopt your language.&lt;p&gt;func&amp;lt;Future&amp;lt;List&amp;lt;Option&amp;lt;String&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;   vs   func[Future[List[Option[String]]]]&lt;p&gt;Which one is easier on your eyes?</text></comment>