Java > Scala

[Jesse Phillips]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:22:16 -0500, Jason House wrote:

> I looked at the issues much differently. I read it hours ago, but here
> are what I remember as big issues:
> * immature / incomplete libraries 

To me it wasn't the question of "what do we use" but "how do we use" that 
was giving them challenges. The quote that stands out to me is,

"Not being able to rely on a strong community presence meant we had to 
fend for ourselves in figuring out what "good" Scala was."

Which then leads into your "hard to teach" point.

> * immature toolchain 

They did complain about the "official" toolchain, but found something 
that work, "using Maven really highlighted the second-class status 
assigned to it in the Scala ecosystem."

> * poor performance with common patterns 

This is where my mention of being built on the JVM/implementation comes 
to play, along with the comments about needing think in Java Lang, Java 
Byte, and Scala.

D does have performance problems due to implementation.

> * not widely adopted / hard to teach

This did come up but I attributed it to the community. When you have a 
best practice of "ignore the community entirely" I feel that signifies a 
huge issue and doesn't lend well to self teaching.

I think D has a lower entry barrier and a community to guide a more 
idiomatic D. There is much to learn about writing D, but at least there 
or some lines already in the sand.