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Scala 3 slowed us down?

(kmaliszewski9.github.io)
261 points kmaliszewski | 2 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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monksy ◴[08 Dec 25 03:41 UTC] No.46188031[source]▶
It was absolutely amazing how stubborn and ridiculous the whole bracket-less syntax change was handled. It was basically a dictatorial decision that they pretended to be a community decision. It was just pushed and tons of people voiced their disapproval. In the end it was "so bad so sad you can always reenable brackets".

They did it to try to appeal to Pythonists.. turns out that wasn't why Pythonists didn't use scala in the first place.

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dionian ◴[08 Dec 25 04:13 UTC] No.46188215[source]▶
I think it’s nice to be able to use it. But like pretty much everything in scala, it’s a huge smorgasbord of things from which you can choose. I personally don’t use that syntax, but it’s cool that I can and sometimes I do just for fun.
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1. jll29 ◴[08 Dec 25 11:00 UTC] No.46190905[source]▶
A language should not be complicated. (Wish Odersky, capable as he is, kept working on his much-verlooked TurboModula).

Simple:

- Scheme

- C

- Pascal

- Go

- Lua

Complicated

- PL/1

- C++ 2024

- Scala 3

Still borderline or beyond?

- Rust

- Java (>850 pp. lang. specification...)

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2. still_grokking ◴[08 Dec 25 21:47 UTC] No.46198101[source]▶
Extremely weird list.

The Scala spec is much shorter than the C spec… Also it's of course much shorter than Rust, where nobody has a real issue with its complexity, at least nobody is complaining really loudly.

The C and Go specs are actually extremely involved, long, and complex given that the languages almost don't have any features at all.

But comparing language specs isn't a 100% fair metric.

One should instead look at formal language semantic definitions written all in the same way.

If you look at these you will for example learn that the C semantics are much more complex than for example Java.

Check out https://kframework.org/ to learn more. (A list of semantics for different languages can be found on the "projects" sub page).