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Scala 3 slowed us down?

(kmaliszewski9.github.io)
261 points kmaliszewski | 5 comments | 07 Dec 25 15:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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hunterpayne ◴[07 Dec 25 21:29 UTC] No.46185337[source]▶
The problem with Scala 3 is that nobody asked for it. The problem with Scala 2 is that the type inference part of the compiler is still broken. Nobody worked on that. Instead they changed the language in ways that don't address complaints. Completely ignore the market and deliver a product nobody wants. That's what happened here.

PS Perhaps they should make an actual unit test suite for their compiler. Instead they have a couple of dozen tests and have to guess if their compiler PR will break things.

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1. thefaux ◴[07 Dec 25 21:55 UTC] No.46185583[source]▶
It's sad but I generally agree. Scala was in my view pretty well positioned for an up and coming language ~2010-15. Not only did the scala 3 rewrite fail to address many of the most common pain points -- compile times and tooling immediately come to mind -- the rewrite took many years and completely stalled the momentum of the project. I have to wonder at this point who is actually starting a new project in scala in 2025.

It's really a shame because in many ways I do think it is a better language than anything else that is widely used in industry but it seems the world has moved on.

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2. zahlman ◴[07 Dec 25 23:22 UTC] No.46186436[source]▶
>It's sad but I generally agree. Scala was in my view pretty well positioned for an up and coming language ~2010-15

I used Scala for a bit around that period. My main recollection of it is getting Java compiler errors because Scala constructs were being implemented with deeply nested inner classes and the generated symbol names were too long.

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3. theLiminator ◴[08 Dec 25 09:03 UTC] No.46190032[source]▶
> It's really a shame because in many ways I do think it is a better language than anything else that is widely used in industry but it seems the world has moved on.

I'm really hoping that https://flix.dev/ will learn from the mistakes of Scala. I t looks like a pretty nice spiritual successor to Scala.

4. still_grokking ◴[08 Dec 25 21:04 UTC] No.46197633[source]▶
> My main recollection of it is getting Java compiler errors because Scala constructs were being implemented with deeply nested inner classes and the generated symbol names were too long.

Sounds like you've used some beta version over 15 years ago.

Nothing like described happens in current Scala and it's like that as long as I can think back. Never even heard of such bugs like stated.

Coming up with such possibly made up stuff over 15 years later sounds like typical FUD, to be honest.

5. still_grokking ◴[08 Dec 25 21:27 UTC] No.46197869[source]▶
> It's really a shame because in many ways I do think it is a better language than anything else that is widely used in industry but it seems the world has moved on.

No it didn't. Scala is powering some of the biggest companies on this planet.

https://business4s.org/scala-adoption-tracker/

It does apparently so well that nobody is even talking about it…

So it seems even better than all the languages people are "talking" (complaining) about.