64
votes
6answers
4k views

What's the difference between Scala and Red Hat's Ceylon language?

Red Hat's Ceylon language has some interesting improvements over Java: The overall vision: learn from Java's mistakes, keep the good, ditch the bad The focus on readability and ease of learning/use ...
36
votes
4answers
2k views

What are the biggest differences between F# and Scala?

F# and Scala are both functional programming langugages that don't force the developer to only use immutable datatypes. They both have support for objects, can use libraries written in other languages ...
33
votes
8answers
2k views

Is memory management in programming becoming an irrelevant concern?

Background I revisited an old (but great) site I had not been to for ages - the Alioth Language Shootout (http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/). I started out programming in C/C++ several years ...
18
votes
10answers
5k views

What do Java developers think of Scala? [closed]

I've noted that IDE support is nowhere near as good, but the language itself supports functional programming idioms much more cleanly.
17
votes
5answers
2k views

Why these attempts to water down Scala?

So now Eclipse has offered Xtend and JetBrains is offering Kotlin - both of which seem to be watered down versions of Scala. My question is why? I've played with Scala a bit and it's not that hard. ...
12
votes
3answers
310 views

Historical origins of Scala implicits

Scala has been called complex with its rich feature set by many of my colleagues and some even blamed all those new features of it. While most programmers are aware of the OO-features, and at least ...
5
votes
1answer
207 views

Why do generics in Scala have erased types, and are not reifiable?

Why do generics in Scala have erased types, and are not reifiable? Is it due to lack of support from the JVM or for compatibility with Java libraries? What are the advantages in general of having ...
5
votes
1answer
281 views

Can Scala be considered a functional superset of Java?

Apart from the differences in syntax, can Scala be considered a superset of Java that adds the functional paradigm to the object-oriented paradigm? Or are there any major features in Java for which ...
4
votes
2answers
249 views

How is Nothing a subtype of every other type in Scala

I am taking Martin Odersky's coursera course on functional programming with scala, and for now I have learned two things that together don't make sense: Scala doesn't support multiple inheritance ...
4
votes
2answers
336 views

What has been learned about making variance part of the type?

In Java, the variance of parameterized types is indicated depending on how it's used: <A extends B,B> void store(ArrayList<B> list, A elem) { list.add(elem); } Whereas in Scala it ...
3
votes
4answers
545 views

How to disseminate Scala?

With the announcement of Ceylon, and after observing the slides describing its intent and feature list, I reckoned this language to be a Scala competitor. Furthermore, as a Scala programmer, I can ...