Martin Odersky - Simply Scala

Opening keynote

Scala lets us write beautifully simple code. It incurs very low boilerplate and does not restrict expression in arbitrary ways. Scala itself is also quite a simple language, with few constructs that compose well. On the other hand, Scala is often described as difficult.

I believe this criticism is not so much directed at the language itself but at certain libraries, frameworks and applications written in Scala. In my talk I want to raise this problem, and start a discussion how the Scala ecosystem can do better.

[cheari]

Always interesting to hear Martin Odersky's talks. I liked this one: "cats blows it out of the water..." at 15:59. Hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Scala as a language is a very fine language and like a lot of people I learnt it from the wonderful MOOCs given by Martin. The main gripe I've always had is the tooling around it. Martin of course mentions "sbt". In comparison, I can fire up vim or emacs and be very productive in C++, Rust, Haskell in pretty short order. Not so with Scala: there's sbt, bloop, metals and so on and they never quite work well together and something always ends up going wrong distracting from the main activity of writing code. Top notch tooling and less language features would have made Scala more successful IMHO.

[draakisback]

Bro is sporting a cartier tank, absolute boss.

[michaelthomson]

Great talk and it's nice to see Martin focus on simplicity.
We just need to get everyone moved to Scala 3 ASAP so everyone can realise the benefits.

[scosminv]

I loved the common sense and pragmatism. Will retry approaching Scala 3 again soon!

[DomainObject]

Funny how Martin equates pure FP with being complex. Taken to the extreme, absolutely yes it is complex. Any paradigm or approach is complex when taken to the extreme.

However when used judiciously (especially using a functional core, imperative shell approach), I’d argue that it is much simpler than the alternatives.

[RolfRochen-ybsq]

Great talk, leading back to Scalas strength in combining functional AND imperative programming. Whereas Scala has been taken over more and more by the FP folks the last few years which I didn’t like because both worlds having their advantages and disadvantages. Great move with Caprese. I am really looking forward to it. 👍

[calebjosueruiztorres]

How do you guys came up with measuring the programming languages grammar size mentioned in the slide at [03:25]? Do you have the comparison including other programming languages like JavaScript, etc? Thanks!

[Andreas-ghis]

There is a good "awesome scala" list ... and it turns out most of the linked projects are abandoned. Scala is clearly on the way out, but you can still get jobs maintaining legacy. In Job listings Scala has really fallen behind, and most of the time I see it mentioned as an alternative, like "we use Python but we would hire someone with experience in Java, C# or Scala". For startups, Scala is a complete no-go. You won't be able to hire people, even though the job offerings are so scarce. Most people that know Scala prefer to work with something else these days, but that's not the folks you get listening to Odersky rant about other languages or how most of the Scala community is messing up Scala.

[keep_coding]

Most of the suggestions from this video simply means use Java or Kotlin :/ Most stuffs that I associate with Scala are being said as discouraged... Am I the only one?

[CalmHive]

lol, even the people creating the coding languages are copying and pasting stuff they don't understand from the web... 25:30

[AbhishekVaid]

As someone who handled complex code in scala I can say that it's not a simple language. Not by a long shot. 1:38

[chuckles]

martin should never be allowed to touch another programming language. Same thing with C++ bjarne. two professors that have no real world experience, creating PAIN in the industry.