[Joeri]

I’m surprised you had such a bad experience with scala. Or do you think these are problems with how scala is perceived versus how it actually is to use?

Personally I liked it. I spent a while doing java web dev with the play framework, and also spent a while doing scala web dev with the play framework, which allowed me to compare directly. I have to say scala is a far nicer OOP language than java. The collection classes are better designed, the way futures and options work is so much more elegant than the java counterparts, and the overall syntax is much more efficient. IMHO if you just use scala as a nicer java, it absolutely trounces it. I couldn’t really say what OOP feature it lacks compared to java. I never tried kotlin, so I cannot tell how that compares.

I also spent a while doing FP style programming with scala in spark and akka. I cannot compare it against other FP languages because I never used them but I can say it was similarly very enjoyable and it was easy to write elegant and understandable code.

I would agree mixing both approaches in a single codebase is a path fraught with peril. If scala has a flaw then it is having too many features. Like C++ you need to be careful which features you use in which combination, or you can end up writing an intractable codebase.

[mtrovo]

I had the same experience as you on the beginning. I started with a project in play framework, I was really excited about an improved java, etc. Then some FP hardcore developers came and started to influence younger developers that OOP was not cool anymore, all our system should be composed of Actions and monads of all kinds, and all business logic should be just a big composition of map and flatMaps.

After a while the project became just a dick measuring context of who could do the best trick shots. Declaring a lot of implicit parameters, implicit conversions automatically applied, crazy type inference that makes compiling 10x slower, you name it. Just to make the code unreadable enough that other developers need days to understand a three lines of code change.

And after all of that the more they do it, the more they are seen as the best Scala developers on the team.

[JackFr]

That seems more a symptom of an organizational dysfunction than an indictment of the language.

To wit, 15 years ago I was on a team where it was “How J2EE can you get?” Ughh. Along the way they(we) basically forgot to solve the business problems.

And that sion was the end of that.

[jane_red]

Based on your preferences you definitely should try Kotlin :)