[xmcqdpt2]

Martin Odersky is just a very nice guy and I get the impression that he isn't keen on saying "no", which is how you end up with a language that allows you to use xml tags inline (no longer supported in Scala 3),

https://github.com/scala/scala-xml/wiki/Getting-started

The "opinionated" Scala are the Typelevel and Zio stacks, which are very cool.

The problem with the "better Java" approach is that although it has helped Scala's growth a lot, it has also made it susceptible to Kotlin. The Scala code that doesn't use the advanced type magic can be straightforwardly rewritten in Kotlin instead. Kotlin also stops your bored developers from building neat type abstractions that no one else understands.

People who use Scala only has a "better Java" can now use Kotlin has a "better "better Java"".

[tombert]

Yeah, and I think that's why a language like Clojure, which is substantially more opinionated than Scala, has been relatively unphased by Kotlin. Clojure is much more niche than Scala, and the adoption has been much more of the "slow and steady" kind.

People who are writing Clojure likely aren't looking at Kotlin as an "alternative"; while they superficially occupy a similar space, I don't think Clojure has any ambitions of being a "better Java", but rather a "pretty decent lisp that runs on the JVM with some cool native data structures and good concurrency tools". I do like it better than Java, but that's because I like FP and Lisp a lot; if I needed a "better Java" right now, I would unsurprisingly probably reach for Kotlin.

[bcrosby95]

Yep, Scala got a lot of attention because you could kinda write it like Java, and Java hadn't changed much in a very long time - people were looking for a "better Java" - and Clojure obviously isn't that.

Kotlin's whole point is a "better Java", so it's going to grab people who went to Scala for a "better Java". Also Java actually has a sane roadmap and methodology to get better too, so there's that now too - with the preview/incubating JEPs, people can see what is coming down the pipeline.

[tombert]

Yep, I don't dispute anything you said there, I think that's pretty consistent with what I said.

Clojure makes no claims of being "Java++". It's a lisp first and foremost that focuses on embracing the host platform and being broadly compatible with existing libraries and strong concurrency protections.