Markus Jais has a few insights on why the hoi polloi is reticent about picking up Scala. Much of the argument centers around the lack of documentation, blogs that are garbage, a nascient set of good tutorials, and Java programmers who think that if they can't learn something in an afternoon, then it's too complicated to even try.

Funny, but you could say the same exact thing about Struts 1.1, but it didn't stop that mess of a framework from permeating just about every enterprise application at the turn of the century.

http://markusjais.com/why-scala-seems-difficult-but-reallyisnt/

Advice from the TSS editorship? Learn Scala: it scales in a way that Java never will.

I recently asked the author of a book on Scala to compare and contrast the experience of using Scala with the experience of using Clojure.  He said that with Clojure, all the pain of the learning curve was up front, while with Scala, every time you thought you'd climbed the learning curve, you'd run into something that would drag you back down again.

Scala is a very impressive piece of engineering, but it's just too damn complicated.  Just learn and use Clojure instead.  If you have any doubts about why you'd want to learn and use a Lisp, read Paul Graham.

Thumbs up to Clojure as well. For infinite scalability, Java is too conflict prone.

I agree on the Struts part, but that was long ago ;-)

I agree on the Struts part, but that was long ago ;-)

I know Scala, but it seems to have crossed the line between "powerful" and "freaking crazy".

Implicits and infix operators in Scala allow to write impenetrable code. For example, try to figure out how http://code.google.com/p/specs/ works without the help of an IDE. Possible, but not easy at all.

Then there are ugly parts as well. Case classes are a kludge, they should be killed with fire in favor of pattern matching for generic Java beans. Traits have their ugly parts as well.

Also, Null/Nil/Empty mess should be killed with fire. Pattern matching for optionals should be fixed as well.

people are dealing with so many new things in the technical world. so expecting a well documented, easy to use, not too crazy language is a must. what happened with struts the late 1990s or early 2000s is not a good measure to go by. We are about 10+ years past struts.  are you saying we shoudl go thru the same pain again ? Consider spring as a counter argument to your silly comment on sturts. Spring was very well documented and has replaced most of struts and other frameworks in last 5 years.

To me - whenever a new language hits the dev community and if its really worth the time, dev community has given enough attention and used it.

Scala is anything but simpler or well documented and the benefits dont outweigh the pain.

Move on... 

I think we are being too hard on Struts :)

Have better frameworks come along since? Sure. But consider the pre-Struts world of Java web-based development. It would be wrong to bash Struts for not being as good as its successors. Struts improved greatly upon what was there at the time. Spring and others improved upon Struts. That's how it works.

One thing that keep me going in Scala despite its rather unexpected slow adoption is the realization just how many (smart) people are working on it (or near it) in EPFL and Stanford. Langauge, esepcially with as deep of eco-system as Scala, needs dozens and dozens of post-docs to work through backlog of ideas and issues. 

Despite of everything I think Scala will succeed due to inpart this reason while most of other langauges will fail or get marginalized (Clojure) long before.

General purpose languges like nothing else require a "brute" force of available time (years) and workforce...

Nikita Ivanov.

GridGain Systems.

Funny, but you could say the same exact thing about Struts 1.1, but it didn't stop that mess of a framework from permeating just about every enterprise application at the turn of the century.

As another posted has said, what was there before Struts was provided for free for you to use ? It was obviously significantly better otherwise would never have been touched. What did *you* provide that was somehow better but overlooked ? Suggest you tone down the "holier than though" editorial attitude before you lose everyone. Software is a progressive process, and, almost always, things improve over time as facilitating technologies are provided. Best to understand that

I never said that those blogs I mentioned are garbage. I just said that they can be  seem intimidating to beginners.

I agree with your advice about learning Scala. It is definitely worth it, will change the way you think about programmin in Java (which I like a lot!!!) and will make you a better programmer, architect, etc. 

And at least for me Scala is a LOT OF FUN. Like Ruby was when I learned it (and still is).

Markus

And I would like to add that I am not a disciple of any Church :-)

I like Bruce Eckel's book and think he is a very smart guy and I value his opinion but I wouldn't call myself a disciple of his "church". This has a way to religous touch.

Markus

It seems the man (bruce eckel) himself blogged about scala (in a very positive way) here recently http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=328540 

That is very interesting information given his attention to python in recent years.

Doh, I never read the original articles, I always go straight to the discussions, which in my opinion are  way more interesting. but yeah the link is in the article...