Great article. I've been learning Scala for a while now as time allows, and have had similar experiences - the syntax is tricky at first, and much of the community focuses on CS esoterica that isn't familiar to me, but the major concepts are quite familiar, coming from Python, Scheme and JavaScript. I'm still looking forward to my moment of epiphany when I realize I've become vaguely competent with Scala.
I disagree completely. C was a well designed language that was later added onto haphazardly and you ended up with C++.
The Scala language designers took a long time examining the shortcomings of java and other languages and ended up improving them, and at the same time coming up witha much smaller language specification.
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++."
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 ...
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
