For such a young language it has a big momentum. Did Scala have that after 2 years?
On 18 Jun., 23:56, cageface <milese...@gmail.com> wrote: > Quick disclaimer - there are a lot of things I like in Scala and I > think Odersky & crew have done some very impressive work bringing > functional language concepts to the VM and giving Java developers a > path forward. I also don't think Clojure vs x language battles are > very productive and don't want to encourage one. > > Anyway, I imagine my trajectory as a developer over the last 10 years > is pretty typical. I started out doing Java stuff but fell in love > with Ruby and Rails in 2004 and have been working almost entirely in > Ruby since. The idea that all that heavy, cumbersome Java cruft could > in many cases be dispensed with was a revelation and the discovery > that I could build software in a language that offered *no* compile > time error checking that was still robust was a very pleasant > surprise. > > Like a lot of Ruby hackers though, I also saw some warts in the > language and also remained curious about other approaches. Also like a > lot of Ruby hackers, the recent rise of new JVM languages has piqued > my interest, particularly Scala and Clojure. Scala seemed like a more > natural step from Ruby and my first experiences with it were > encouraging. It seemed to offer a lot of the expressiveness of Ruby > but with potentially much better performance and more robust runtime > and, intriguingly, static type checking. However, after writing a > handful of small but non-trivial programs in it the complexity lurking > under the surface started peeking through and the intricacies of the > type system and the significant complexity of the language itself > became more apparent. It started to feel like a step back to the > rigors of Java and heavyweight syntax and fights with the compiler. > The predominant Scala web platform, Lift, also seemed to have a very > heavy, enterprisey sort of "correctness" about it that felt > overengineered. > > So I bounced over to Clojure and its clean, elegant core and minimal, > flexible syntax seemed very refreshing. It felt much more in the > liberal, malleable spirit of Ruby. The functional stuff was a bit of a > stretch but it also seemed built on a simpler set of core concepts > than the featureful but complex Scala collections. > > Unfortunately there seems to be a lot more commercial momentum for > Scala though. It's still a blip compared to the mainstream languages > but I'm seeing more and more job posts mentioning it, and hardly any > for Clojure. I don't think Scala is a bad language overall, but I'm > not sure I'd dump Ruby for it. On the other hand, I can imagine > migrating most of my dev work over to Clojure with the right project. > Has anybody else wrestled with this choice? Any thoughts? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
