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Scala is for good programmers

34 replies on 3 pages. Most recent reply: Oct 25, 2010 2:38 PM by Anatoly Polinsky

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robert young

Posts: 361
Nickname: funbunny
Registered: Sep, 2003

Re: Scala is for good programmers Posted: Oct 7, 2010 8:57 AM
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I see that I omitted the explicit statement of the point of the tale: over the arc of history, the number of programmers (writing to a compiler) per-capita (users) has fallen off a cliff. There's every reason to believe that fall will continue.

Kay Schluehr

Posts: 302
Nickname: schluehk
Registered: Jan, 2005

Re: Scala is for good programmers Posted: Oct 7, 2010 10:39 PM
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The apocalypse has already happened.

Maybe not so much in the Swiftian world of business analysts becoming programmers or programmers becoming business analysts and their striking differences, but in my world. The typical colleague of mine has a degree in EE or technical informatics. They are not programming in a Bambi language, specially designed for them, but in C and unlike their colleagues with CS degree they know how to read assembly. Sometimes they also know a bit of Java and find it great but not suited for their own work. Their dominant coding style is writing Spaghetti Code. Why passing a value to a function when you can also use a globally defined temporary buffer which can be shared by everyone? The quality criterion is: "it's good if it works". They never model systems but contain all technical details in their heads.

They are passionate tinkerers and get things running quickly where more cautious types would declare early capitulation. It's not that they do not detest ugly, over- or under-designed crap but they get over it without batting an eye. Their software packages contain everything they found interesting at some time but couldn't get rid of for some reason. When they write technical documentation it is an extended getting-started document. All you need to know is how to configure stuff. At the highest level of abstraction a software system is a set of binary specified protocols together with some state flow diagrams. If they attempt to make Java engineers happy and demonstrate that their own software engineering skills are state of the art they invent an XML format for packaging binary data.

Do they replace "proper" software engineers? Sometimes. Are they in danger to get extinct? LOL!

James Watson

Posts: 2024
Nickname: watson
Registered: Sep, 2005

Re: Scala is for good programmers Posted: Oct 8, 2010 7:14 AM
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> I see that I omitted the explicit statement of the point
> of the tale: over the arc of history, the number of
> programmers (writing to a compiler) per-capita (users) has
> fallen off a cliff. There's every reason to believe that
> fall will continue.

First of all, data? Second of all, even if this were true, it doesn't mean the number of developers is decreasing. As an econometrist you obviously understand that even though Belgiums per capita GDP is far higher than China', China still has a higher GDP than Belgium. Thirdly, whether programming is done against a compiler, or a interpreter or something else is entirely irrelevant to my argument. Programming is programming. Tools don't define an occupation. A carpenter is still a carpenter if he uses a nail-gun instead of swinging a hammer.

Graham Kelly

Posts: 6
Nickname: gmkelly
Registered: Jul, 2010

Re: Scala is for good programmers Posted: Oct 15, 2010 6:04 AM
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>
> Now if there was a version of Scala that compiled to
> native code and had facilities for 'unsafe' hardware
> access...

Have a look at D. It's trying to do for C/C++ what Scala does for Java (improve the good stuff, remove the crap, but still allow access to the old language's power).

Anatoly Polinsky

Posts: 1
Nickname: anatoly
Registered: Oct, 2010

Re: Scala is for good programmers Posted: Oct 25, 2010 2:38 PM
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Scala is for "good programmers"?

Ok, and French is for "good humans"?

Scala is just a language, there are plenty. It is interesting and academic, it is fast and with lots of funky characters, it is for people who like it, but it is not for somebody to judge whether those people who like it are actually "good programmers".

/Anatoly

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