GoingNative 6: The D Episode with Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/23/12 11:09 PM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
> On 24-02-2012 05:06, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
>> On 02/23/2012 11:57 AM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>>>
>>> I still cannot fathom how the Scala guys thought using the JVM was a
>>> good idea.
>>
>> It gave them a good garbage collector (an area that has held D's
>> performance back for years), a large library via Java compatibility, and
>> a population of users to appeal to. Scala probably wouldn't have
>> succeeded if it was just another object-oriented language without ties
>> to the JVM.
>
> They could have used the CLI. Both MS.NET and Mono have good garbage
> collectors, and Mono in particular has SIMD intrinsics, an LLVM back
> end, etc.
>
> I've heard a lot of people complain that Scala doesn't run on .NET.

I think Scala has positioned itself as a Java replacement with a smooth 
transition. The JVM works on more platforms than .NET so there was a 
simple argument by numbers to be made. Probably most importantly, 
Odersky already was a Java expert motivated by needs and desires on that 
particular platform.

Andrei