
Moving from Java to Scala - One year later... - DanielRibeiro
http://blog.danmachine.com/2011/01/moving-from-java-to-scala-one-year.html
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harryh
FWIW, we've had lots of success w/ Scala @ foursquare (99% of our server code
is in scala). It's been a great recruiting tool (great engineers are attracted
to companies using new technologies), and we find it much much less verbose
than Java would have been.

~~~
zeemonkee
What problems or issues have you encountered specific to Scala and Lift with
Foursquare ?

~~~
harryh
1) The scala compiler is a little slow (compared to javac). 2) Lift is a
pretty new framework and we run into warts/bugs from time to time. It can also
take a bit of time for new engineers to get their head around it.

Those are the two biggest things I would say.

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benfwirtz
Great review, thanks :)

In terms of Scala in enterprises, I think the question is not only if it is or
can stay the "better" programming language with long living support, but also
how popular it will become, i.e. how easy it will be to find (and afford)
skilled developers for it (and the numbers you found don't allow too much
optimism yet).

And I think that is not only true for enterprises - also startups should ask
themselved if they can easily get talent for the technologies they use or how
much time they will need to spend on getting people trained.

I look forward to the next review - in another year? ;)

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rednum
Any other HN'ers with Java to Scala experience? A friend of my friend tried
doing the same, but eventually his team decided that its not worth the effort
(I don't know more details actually, only that they are doing some enterprise
software)

~~~
kikibobo69
I've been using Scala for about a year now. Started writing some test using
ScalaTest, ScalaCheck, and Specs, and really liked it. Then I solved some hard
problems using Scala, with a lot less code, and a lot fewer bugs, than it
seemed like we would have ended up with using Java. I'd say about 99% of our
codebase is still Java, but the Scala bits are quite noteworthy both for
leading to something nicer to maintain over time (mostly by need no
maintenance, or very very little), and for solving a hard problem without an
explosion of Java boilerplate. A more functional approach ends up being a bit
easier to test. The collections framework is >awesome<. For us it has been a
slow, grassroots thing, and I don't think we are going to see a big bang, but
those of us who have taken the plunge have a very hard time going back to
Java.

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wccrawford
"Even though I haven't developed any project in Scala yet,"

I stopped reading there and started skimming, and nothing changed my mind
back.

Many languages are cool until you actually have to support something you wrote
on them. That's when you find out the real dirt on the language.

~~~
heathanderson
You probably should have continued reading. Given the context I'm pretty sure
that the author meant "Even though I hadn't...". See this quote a few lines
later:

"Now, one year later, after writing 8622 lines of code in Scala"

