Hacker News Reader

Comment by icedchai | Hacker News Reader

Scala is syntactically complex, compiles relatively slowly, and some of the tools (IDE plugins) are terrible. Or, at least, they were a few years ago. On the positive side, you'll have a more mature ecosystem of third-party libraries since you'll be able to tap into everything Java offers.

Go, on the other hand, has a simple syntax, excellent tools, and compiles lightning fast. Depending on what you're doing you may not have the library support you need.

View on HN

Thanks for the reply and the data about each. Compile time is actually something I hadn't given one iota of thought about, likely because I've never really worked in a compiled language. I imagine this is a huge pain when you want to make a quick production change or you just like to get quick changeset feedback.

c++ had huge compile-time issues which is one of the motivations behind go's compile-time speed - it feels like you are working in a dynamic language

It is largely not a problem for that because Scala's incremental compiles are reasonable and test time dominates build times in either case.

The speed of the go tool chain becomes a huge asset when it comes to integrating with other tools. This allows freedom to use the environment you as a developer want to use. Being able to work exclusively in vim/tmux after years of needing intellij to be productive is a breath of fresh air.

Compilation is speedy enough that you can just use `go run` in development and it feels like running a python script.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com