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Comment by abernard1 | Hacker News Reader

> Scala the language is quite fine, but it attracts this kind of programmers.

It does. I call them "code scientists": engineers want to learn a language to build things, scientists want to build things to learn the language. I've interviewed >100 Scala engineers and if the panel thought they were the kind of person that just wanted to understand FP instead of solve problems, they were rejected.

I am now retired, but Scala is still my goto choice for engineering software. It checks all the boxes on concurrency, bulk I/O, ecosystem. In the hands of a sane and pragmatic practitioner, it's hugely productive.

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I read this and I get so tempted but then I load up the homepage and see "JVM" and regain my senses. You almost got me.

Well, Scala compiles to JavaScript and native through Scala.js and Scala Native. Plus you can also compile to native with GraalVM Native which works very well.

Scala compilation + graalvm compilation = very long breaks :)

Interesting, in my experience long compile times in Scala equates with a bad code base. And invariably involves an uber object with a whole lot of implicit conversations and is imported on every other source file.

I don’t know about bad code but a lot of derivations that send compiler into proof loops usually is what is causing slowdowns. You can write the same code by hand, pick your poison. Honestly, scalac is probably still faster than typescript compiler and somehow no one complaining about ts

I think the pertinent part of the comment you're replying to was graalvm, not so much Scala. I was compiling a small Scala codebase that took 15 minutes to compile - most of that was not my code, it analyses the reachability of the entire classpath and compiles it to native machine code.

> I call them "code scientists": engineers want to learn a language to build things, scientists want to build things to learn the language.

I think this is a bit contradictory as it is phrased. Learning the language is essential to use it effectively. Otherwise one is better off with a language already known. And it is very possible to build things to learn the language and still keep it sane.

If we went back to let's say 2014 "when the cake pattern was the solution of all problems in world" I think I'd agree with your statement, even back then when I was a bit of a Scala fanatic.

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