StackOverflow2013

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copied!<p>I was unshackled from the J2EE leash last year wanted to do something new after 12 years of Java in the enterprise building very large system for some of the worlds biggest companies.</p> <p>I had tried Ruby on Rails in the past. After building a few sample apps I did not like the feel of it or the fact that I would have to write a ton of unit tests to cover stuff that is normally done by a compiler. </p> <p>Groovy on Grails was my next port of call. I have to say I do like this but it suffers from the same dynamic typing problems as ROR. Don't get me wrong I am not putting Grails down as it is an excellent framework and I will still use it. Each has its own place IMO. </p> <p>I then jumped on Scala and have now built a hybrid application based on Scala and Spring MVC. At first working with Scala is difficult but it gets easier and more productive the more time you put into it. I've reached a tipping point where I now want to invest time in Lift as well. </p> <p>The combination of "Programming in Scala" and David Pollak's "Beginning Scala" books is good for learning the language, the latter with a less academic bent. </p> <p>Scala is still young and has some way to go. I think it has a bright future and I see momentum is already picking up. Recently one of the creators of the Groovy language said in a blog post he would never have bothered designing Groovy if Scala had been around at the time. </p> <p>I think some more work on better Java API integration/wrapping will give Scala the boost it needs to win more followers. The basic integration is there already but I think its could be polished a bit more. </p> <p>Yes IDE support is there but it is basic at the moment. The powerfully refactoring support of Intellij is not there yet and I miss that a lot. The compiler + IDE support with a mix of of other plugins is not mature yet. I sometimes get very weird internal compiler errors caused by how Scala sits with JDO enhancement for the Goggle app engine. However these are little things that can be easily fixed. Early adaptation of new technologies and languages always comes with a little pain. But this bit of pain can produce great pleasure in the future.</p> <p>If I look at the capabilities of Scala compared to early Java its miles ahead. When I moved from C++ to Java the JVM was not ready yet regarding scalability. There used to be lots of weird crash and burn JVM core dumps on various OSes. All of this has now been fixed in Java and the JVM is rock solid. Scals runs in the JVM so it has been given a massive head start on native platform integration. Its standing on the shoulders of giants! </p> <p>After years of building and supporting enterprise applications my vote is for a language where a compiler can catch most of the non functional bugs before even unit tests are built. I love the type checking mixed with the power of functional programming. I like the fact that I am doing OO++. </p> <p>I think the development community will decide if Scala is the future or not. The downside of adopting Scala now would be if it did not pick up momentum and adaptation. It would be very difficult to maintain an Scala code base with very few Scala developers around. However I watched Java come from the skunk works into the enterprise to replace C++ and it was all pushed from the bottom up by the developer community. Time will tell for Scala but currently it has my vote. </p>

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