There were a lot of interesting perspectives, both for and against Scala's design decisions, and I learned a lot.
1. Scala is a complex language, with many tools aimed at library authors. There are drawbacks to this approach (witness the headaches of C++), but also advantages (witness the massive commercial success of C++).
2. Plenty of Scala developers are happy to use it as a "better Java." A small but vocal minority are engaged in hard-core functional programming, which can occasionally lead to both cool libraries and minor conflict within the community.
3. Some of Colebourne's original criticisms were acknowledged by Scala developers, especially those pertaining to module systems. However, opinions on whether Scala should limit mutability (as Clojure and Haskell do) were divided.
This followup post is less interesting. He goes out of his way to quote people who made insightful comments that agreed with his views, but only quotes snark and mockery from those who disagreed.
There were a lot of interesting perspectives, both for and against Scala's design decisions, and I learned a lot.
1. Scala is a complex language, with many tools aimed at library authors. There are drawbacks to this approach (witness the headaches of C++), but also advantages (witness the massive commercial success of C++).
2. Plenty of Scala developers are happy to use it as a "better Java." A small but vocal minority are engaged in hard-core functional programming, which can occasionally lead to both cool libraries and minor conflict within the community.
3. Some of Colebourne's original criticisms were acknowledged by Scala developers, especially those pertaining to module systems. However, opinions on whether Scala should limit mutability (as Clojure and Haskell do) were divided.
This followup post is less interesting. He goes out of his way to quote people who made insightful comments that agreed with his views, but only quotes snark and mockery from those who disagreed.