Okay, so perhaps I flew off the handle a bit. My objections are to the message, not to the messenger. What upsets me are the repeated half truths and falsehoods that I'm seeing here, on a very public forum, where people are almost certainly going to form invalid conclusions. This is a great shame, as I truly believe that Scala has great potential to improve the quality on programming against the JVM for all of us!
Many on this list have gone to great lengths to explain how the flexibility of Scala's features can be used to create APIs and frameworks that are incredibly simple to use. Kojo has been used as just one case study of this. You have repeatedly ignored each and every such explanation to instead declare "Kojo isn't Scala, it's no different from an embedded interpreter", and "Scala's flexibility is actually just complexity". Yet you haven't once reinforced this position with a SINGLE example. Just saying something (however many times) doesn't make it so, however much authority you may express in your choice of words! An ad-hoc sampling of terms from the TOC of a book, with no organisation or explanation of the terms, can make ANY subject look complicated and totally obscure whatever design elegance might be present. This approach might be valid in marketing (or politics), but it's certainly not worthy of an engineer! A structured comparative analysis of Scala vs some other language would be far more valid in any a serious discussion. Please... Give me something worthy of, say, a peer reviewed journal that I could genuinely respond to! fact: When programming in the Kojo environment, you are programming Scala, in the Scala REPL. Yes, it has a DSL that makes things simpler for beginners, but this still doesn't alter the fundamental truth that a function defined within Kojo IS a Scala function. fact: methods, operators, and functions in Scala are directly equivalent. Operator overloading and method overloading are no different. Listing these concepts separately runs completely counter to some core concepts of the language. Kojo users won't be viewing the language through Java-tinted glasses, so don't do them the injustice of analysing the language as though they would. fact: teaching functions, and the composition of functions, encompasses a smaller range of concepts than teaching object-orientation. It's also synergistic with the study of algebra, so students learning this style can already lean on existing knowledge outside of computer programming. fact: The footer on EVERY SINGLE PAGE of the Kojo website is: "powered by Scala", long before you even start to download the documentation. fact: The Kojo documentation itself clearly states, on page 16: "Everything that you write within the Script window will be in the Scala language." 2010/8/30 Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> > > > On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Kevin Wright <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Let me get this right.... You claim to have a coherent understanding of >> Scala, based not on a book, but rather just the table of contents of a book? >> >> Based on this extensive knowledge, you then set out to have a reasoned >> debate about the language with people who are actively working on open >> source projects written in Scala, many of whom are even committers to the >> core Scala libraries. >> >> This is dangerous ground, not unlike those who oppose the teaching of >> evolution despite not having any formal qualifications in Science >> themselves. After all, a biology degree makes you small minded, right? >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo >> >> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo>p.s. Wendy Wright is most >> certainly NOT a relation of mine :) >> > > You know, I decided to let your first insult slide because I assumed you > didn't really mean it and that responding to it would only make things > worse, but you're really crossing the line with this one. What are you going > to accuse me of next, being a nazi? > > This discussion was never about Scala, it's about Kojo and whether Kojo > teaches you Scala. You need to calm down and step away from the computer for > a while, because you're being way too emotional about this. Come back when > you've cooled down. > > Okay. > > About you questioning my knowledge of Scala: I helped review Bill's book > since the very early days. For all you know, I might even have been coding > in Scala for longer than you. But you know what, this is *irrelevant*. > Address the message, not the messenger. And my message has been crystal > clear and fact based since the beginning of this discussion. Here it is, > once more. > > Throughout this thread, I have given you nothing but facts pertaining to > the Kojo documentation, the latest one being a list of Scala features that I > claim are *not* mentioned in the Kojo documentation. It's a simple > proposition that should be trivial to invalidate if you are right: a simple > search through the forty page Kojo documentation will do. > > It's a yes or no proposition. > > And you choose to respond with ad hominem attacks... Classy, Kevin, really > classy. > > -- > Cédric > > > -- > 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]. 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