Currently it's being used by: twitter Novell LinkedIn Xerox EDF Trading Cisco Nature News Sony Pictures Office Depot SAIC eBay Siemens TomTom SAP Foursquare
and that's just the bigger names who are willing to go public. I'm also informally aware of a number of Biotech firms and banks who are using Scala but don't want to talk about it.. To address the concerns you raised: 1. Scala is still mainly an academic language and it is not mature enough for production; Maybe this was true 2 years ago. The Scala Foundation is currently being formed to help co-ordinate "enterprise" requirements. There are also a number of companies now willing and able to offer support for the language. In the US, Bill Venners our very own Dick Wall are offering Scala training and support In Europe, Martin Odersky & Co. have formed Scala Solutions to provide training and support In the UK, Miles Sabin has been doing this for a while, and also writing the Eclipse plugin for Scala So it has the best of both worlds, not only is commercial support available, but it has a strong academic heritage. It was created by the same man as the current generation of java compilers, and has a type system designed by people who have seriously studied type systems 2. When we will need to hire it will be far more difficult (and expansive) to find Scala developers than Java ones; I make it a matter of principle to favour candidates with more that one language anyway! Experience has shown that they're more adaptable, more willing to learn, and generally better coders. Asking candidates to have at least one functional language will both attract the more talented developers, and help weed out the weaker ones 3. The effort and cost to convert Java developers in Scala ones greatly overcome the advantages of writing software in Scala instead of in Java. Studies have shown around 4 weeks exposure before a developer becomes more productive than they were in Java. But these were done before 2.8 was released, with its better tooling and documentation, so this figure may well be lower now :) Honestly, if there's one thing you should take for granted that a good developer can do with ease, it's learning a new language. The transition to agile (for example) is a much bigger proposition. I think the bigger problem is how the risk is perceived. Many managers were themselves once active Java developers, some still are (part time). Such fear they'll lose control when developers migrate to a new language, because they'll still be stuck on Java and don't want to move out of that comfort zone. My advice, when selling any idea to management, find a risk then sell Scala as being the way to mitigate it. One of the biggest risks that many firms encounter is not enough unit testing, yet many in Management still have this gut feeling that unit tests somehow aren't producing something of value. (this is a bit like law firms imagining that due diligence isn't worth the hassle, it's insane!) So... sell 'em on ScalaTest as a way to write tests more productively. Simultaneously playing to the fear that Unit Tests take too long to write, yet there aren't enough of them. You'll also find the various styles available to be very popular ( http://www.scalatest.org/quick_start) Once other devs are happy with Scala in testing, you can look at wider adoption. Also, make sure you're acquainted with Scala's faults, be honest and frank about them. It show's you've considered all the risks before recommending Scala, and still think it's a good choice. On 30 July 2010 10:28, Blanford <[email protected]> wrote: > Twitter is the only company I know of using Scala. > > Unfortunately it is not working for them. > Their code is more buggy and unstable than ever. > > > > > > On Jul 30, 4:09 am, Mario Fusco <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I study and play at home with Scala from more than a year. I don't > > know if it will be the Next Big Language, but I know I enjoy it a lot. > > I also think it improves both my productivity and the readability of > > my code since it gives some constructs and features I miss a lot in > > Java. > > > > For these reasons I tried to introduce it at a least a couple of times > > in my real world job, but I found a lot of resistance from a part of > > the technical guys (who basically are too lazy to learn a completely > > new language) and especially from non-technical people who gave the > > following justifications: > > > > 1. Scala is still mainly an academic language and it is not mature > > enough for production; > > 2. When we will need to hire it will be far more difficult (and > > expansive) to find Scala developers than Java ones; > > 3. The effort and cost to convert Java developers in Scala ones > > greatly overcome the advantages of writing software in Scala instead > > of in Java. > > > > Of course I don't agree with this points (especially the first one), > > but in the end I had to give up so I am still obliged to do the 100% > > of my work in Java. > > > > After this long premise, my questions are: > > > > 1. How many of you are the same position of mine? And conversely, how > > many are using Scala in their day by day job? > > 2. For who is using Scala, do you find a real advantage in that? > > 3. How could I convince people in my company to do part of our > > development in Scala? > > > > Cheers, > > Mario Fusco > > twitter: @mariofusco > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Kevin Wright mail/google talk: [email protected] wave: [email protected] skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
