Well, IJ experience for Scala 3 is still noticeably worse than for Scala 2. We're still cross-compiling our work projects, waiting until Scala 3 support in Intellij is good enough to switch.
Given that Scala-Android efforts predate Kotlin, Scala could have had a shot at Android if EPFL resources were allocated to it, like to Scala.js.
Kotlin is not simple at all, it has a lot of keywords for strange and very specific features and corner cases, it's hard to remember them all. Moreover, the Intellij Kotlin plugin is somehow slower than Scala's despite being a 1st party language and not having implicits, how they managed to achieve that is a mystery.
Python is multi paradigm, but does several things really well that other ecosystems do not. Javascript as well. Java as well. What claim to fame does Scala have in this regard, aside from being the best supported language for Spark for several years before PySpark overtook it? Perhaps Akka before the boneheaded decision to paywall that ecosystem?
"Among the clients of the Spark runtime architecture, Scala is the most popular language, followed by Python and Java. According to a recent survey by Databricks, the company behind Apache Spark, 71% of respondents reported using Scala for Spark development, while Python was used by 24% and Java by 5%.
Another survey by Typesafe on the Spark ecosystem revealed that 88% of respondents used Scala, 44% used Java, and 22% used Python, with the percentages reflecting multiple language usage.
Scala is considered the most optimized language for Spark due to its integration with the JVM and its role as the language in which Spark was internally implemented, offering better performance and access to the latest features."
I think the info is even more outdated than that. The article is from August 2024 but it cites "a recent survey by Databricks" that from what I can tell isn't linked to, so who knows what data they're referring to.
I was deep into the big data ecosystem in the 2010s. Those numbers feel like they're from 2017 or so. Scala has been on a slide every since.
>> Every significant language became multi-paradigm these days, but you can do it intentionally, like Scala, or you can do it badly.
> Python is multi paradigm, but does several things really well that other ecosystems do not.
Both Perl and Ruby can be, and often are, used instead of Python to great success for similar concerns. IOW, the three are often Liskov substitutable[0].
> Javascript as well.
You're kidding, right?
> What claim to fame does Scala have in this regard ...
Scala supports declarative, generative, imperative, meta, and object-oriented paradigms. All of which are supported by at least, but not limited to, the JVM and JavaScript runtimes.
These capabilities transcend libraries (such as Akka) and/or frameworks (such as Spark).
I don't think it's possible to write a flawless codebase. That doesn't mean SWEs don't seek mastery of their craft. Moreover, achieving mastery doesn't mean you would actually want to write an 'ideal codebase', that seems like an art project disconnected from the purpose of the craft.
“mastery of the craft” is a myth… whatever codebase you see (and I’ve seen more than I can count) you will go “wtf is this?!” over and over again. furthermore, whatever codebase someone was lucky enough to initially start with, after X amount of time you asked those same masters (if they are still around) and they will inevitably tell you “oh boy, if I can start this over, I would have…” there just is no mastery, there are just people that deeply care about what they are building and try their best not to F it up along the way but all the “craft” and “mastery” talk is just empty words people talk around fireplaces and/or at various conferences where people pitching “craft” and “mastery” and “you need [insert dev process du jour XP/agile/…]” are there to make money selling the bullshit
I think you are conflating mastery with some kind of beautiful codebase that is completely obvious to everyone else. Einstein had mastery over physics and yet his ideas required a lot of studying to understand and explore.
Engineering is the intersection of science and economics. You build the thing as best you can with the knowledge you have and you often discover things you didn’t even know once you start building. Combine that with time and resource limitations, and you have to make reasonable short cuts to deliver things.
Also remember that even if there’s one master on a codebase, organizations often pair them with many non-masters to try to accelerate things. What that looks like then is a mish mash of things that don’t make sense because the master is struggling to maintain a coherent vision that other people are executing; it’s hard to develop consistency even when there’s just one person let alone a broader team.
But your benchmark is fine if one master can show another master a codebase and explain why the pieces are there and which pieces are shortcuts and what the vision is. Trying to develop that knowledge by yourself in the middle of the dev cycle is a fools errand; one of the first things I do when I come to a codebase is ask a bunch of questions to build up my understanding of the history of the codebase and why things were done a specific way.
I agree with literally every word you wrote. But what is this “mastery” or “craft” then? if we agree (rightfully so) that some special people exist, eventually (or immediately) other people get involved, we as industry accept “we had a deadline so it was cool to ‘cut corners’ etc…” - where is mastery or craft in this process?
I have and I am sure you have worked with some amazing people over the years but to me our entire industry is so far removed from anything resembling mastery or craft that even mentioning it at this point in my life makes me chuckle (and at times literally laugh out loud)
I think people have a very weird notion of mastery and think it looks very different in other fields. That’s because mastery no longer looks like mastery once you attain it. Mastery also doesn’t look like the absence of imperfections - even art house films by master auteurs will have imperfections the masters will see and compromises they had to make to get a film done. Talk to a master builder and they’ll instantly start pointing out flaws in buildings. Electrical grids regularly see outages despite.
So my question then is how would you define mastery if you believe our industry doesn’t practice it.
I’m shocked to hear how different your experience is from mine. I very often see good code and bad code and the difference is very clear, even years into a project.
