My knowledge of compiler constructions is fairly limited and I
might be wrong, but it seems to me that the Scala compiler is
broken. Scala has gained some bad reputation for long build times
(just google for Scala and build time) which IMHO cannot be
explained by the large number of language features. D has a
comparable large number of language features and compiles much
faster than Scala.
D has been designed from the beginning with caution on
compilation speed and thinking about how to keep it slow to begin
with. D not only in that way is a language that was thought out.
On the contrary, Scala seems to me to be a language where many
features of various languages were thrown into one and then a
compiler was built for it. The incremental Scala compiler pretty
much rescues the build time problem, though, and they are mostly
lucky now. Also, IMHO, implicits are really crazy and it should
have been clear from the beginning that they will become a
problem for scalable build times, see
http://java.dzone.com/articles/implicits-scala-conversion.
Interestingly. Martin Odersky got his Ph.D. from Niklaus Wirth at
the ETH and I don't want to know what Wirth would say about
implicits.
The presentation by Paul Phillips was discussed in the Scala
forums at great length:
What's up with Paul Phillips?
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=de#!topic/scala-debate/IgrKCdConlA
54 replies
What's up with Paul Phillips?
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=de#!topic/scala-user/ImqlClXTrS4[201-225-false]
201 replies
Sadly, the only serious language on the JVM besides Java8 is
Scala. Ceylon has not taken off at all after becoming 1.0.
Groovy's language extensions are basically AST transformations
and not truly baked into a "real" language. Nobody knows how
Kotlin will be doing when it turns 1.0 maybe somewhen in
autumn/winter this year.
To get a plus for your skill set when applying for Java jobs you
will have to learn Scala. For a Java developer like me any
chances for a job doing D are very slim. But I keep looking into
D just out of interest and to get some food for my mind. There is
so much to learn from looking at D and playing with it that I
keep doing it just on a fun & interest basis.
