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by spir 2259 days ago
I've worked with Dotty a bit and read about it a lot.

I am very excited about Scala 3 :)

Scala 3 isn't a python2/python3 situation. It will take years for large codebases to be upgraded to Scala 3. However, the tools to migrate code from Scala 2 to Scala 3 will be reliable and highly automated, due to Scala's strong type system. Most popular Scala libraries and frameworks will be available on Scala 3 right from the get-go. I expect that most Scala programmers and companies will want to write Scala 3 code asap.

Within the Scala community, the only truly divisive aspect of Scala 3 afaik is the introduction of optional python-style and Haskell-style syntax with significant whitespace. I was stridently against significant whitespace and now prefer it after having tried coding Scala 3 for awhile.

2 comments

Thanks for this info, very useful and exciting.

I stopped using scala around 5 years back, want to get back to it. Would you recommend jumping straight to dotty? I’ve been doing a mostly python and a bit of Haskell in the meantime.

I'd jump straight to dotty! You may as well learn the latest 'n greatest.
> It will take years for large codebases to be upgraded to Scala 3

Which for production level code bases means never. I can't even imagine what we are going to do with our 7 year old Scala code base.

It's the Java 1.4/Java 6/Java 8 problem all over again. Big companies refuse to keep up with the base languages, and important parts of the ecosystem (e.g. Spark) fall behind the language.