http://www.neverworkintheory.org/?p=375
Findings: * It takes longer to write the same thing in scala than in java, but the difference is not that much. * The end result is less lines in scala than in java, but the difference is not that much. * Programming skill was not a statistically relevant influence on how well people managed to handle the scala side of the experiment. This goes against widespread belief (including what I thought, and will continue to presume might be true until more studies come out, but it has tempered this belief for me) that scala is less suited to Joe 'I just work here' programmer. * Scala code is just as performant as java code. (Is anyone who knows how VMs work and what scala does under the hood surprised by this?) It's just one study, and it is notoriously difficult to study effectiveness of programming languages. Nevertheless, some highlights which your random 'wow, I switched to (newlang) and my code is like 10% in size and I can write it 5 times faster' anecdote failed to do: * Half the group, at random, programmed java first and scala second, and the other half went the other way around. The considerable benefit of having experience with the project domain in the second go around is thus balanced. * The subject base is 13 people, not 1. * They measured things. No part of what this summary publishes involves asking the test subjects any subjective questions. Of course, there are also some parts I noticed that aren't as nice: * It's a very specific domain: Implement this 17-page VSLI layout algorithm specificatino (essentially: Here are a truckload of little regions that all need to be fit and interconnected on a chip. Please write an algorithm that'll pack it all in on the smallest possible surface. I'll actually tell you how to do it in this 17 page document, but you have to translate it to code). There are a million-and-one problem domains in programming, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the results for i.e. code size in domain A is 50% in favour of scala (scala code half size), and in domain B it's actually the other way around. So, we can extrapolate the results of this to programming in general, or is this primarily useful only if you are considering a project that is similar to writing VLSI layout algorithms? * The 13 test subjects had 4 years of java experience coming into this project, and no scala experience. They were, fortunately, given a warmup assignment in scala to try and eliminate that part of the learning process, but was it enough? Then again, if you're a java programmer trying to figure out if you should switch, this part of the test means it should be more accurate for you, so there's that. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/F3-DpB-kpjIJ. 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.
