If you think "Pattern Matching" counts as something you can do in scala but can't in java, I must not have made my argument clear. That's just syntax sugar. Nice syntax sugar, surely, but syntax sugar nonetheless. What I'm talking about, is things like:
- do multithreading in a platform independent fashion. - enjoy the use of a garbage collector. - compile once then deploy where-ever you feel like it. You can even switch both the OS and the CPU of your hardware platform without missing a beat. - Have at least a halfway workable set of basic libraries to rely on without futzing about with further downloads, without breaking the above rules. These are mostly things C couldn't give you. What feature of this caliber does scala have that java lacks? Nothing. However, being JVM targetted does not mean its hopeless. Here are some truly amazing features that would, I predict, cause programmers to move in droves and gives you a shot at being the next 15%er language: - ast based editing. - built in versioning, of everything, including the language itself. - pluggable compiler based language. - AST editing and in general a language that ties the entire development environment together* *) Has been done before, but in a walled garden, for-pay, corporate environment. This traditionally hasn't worked particularly well, and hasn't produced many 15%ers in history. Also, most implementations I know of weren't very good. i.e: VB. On Aug 26, 6:03 pm, Josh Berry <[email protected]> wrote: > Actually, unless you are taking the "Turing complete" argument, then > there are many things I can do in Scala I couldn't do in Java. > Pattern matching springs to mind rather quickly. Lazy vals, trait > mixins, etc. Can you reproduce the behavior elsewhere? Yeah. > Definitely. Doesn't mean I want to, personally. > > > I'm trying to explain that this is historically not a formula for > > creating the next big thing programming language. Scala could of > > course be the first language in history to become a 15%er based on > > only nice syntax, but that would be rather surprising. (15%er = a > > language which, at some point in time, was being used for at least 15% > > of all coding going on worldwide. Only a select few languages can make > > this claim, and there are usually only 2 at a time. Right now this is > > C and java, and you'd have to go back more than a decade to find > > another). > > I think the big problem here is that Scala has opened it up so that > learning the language has very little to offer by itself now. > Instead of finding strictly language tricks to solve problems, we are > left with learning the actual abstractions to build solutions. For > myself, I think I am better for learning them. Even if they do have > scary names. -- 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.
