> I'd argue Groovy is even easier to migrate to. By migrate, I mean > from an organisation skills perspective. Groovy/Grails is very easy > to pick up, especially for Java developers. It's especially good for > quick/prototype/RAD type apps. It's also great for maintenance/ > support perspective
Woah there! Not having a type system surely makes maintenance harder, as the compiler isn't going to help you find places that need changing when you alter a method's signature. > IMHO, it's difficult for Scala to gain widespread use until the > industry realises the benefit of functional/declarative languages. You can program in Scala as if it were Java, and you'll still get an improvement in readability in many cases. It gently nudges you towards FP, but does not force it. Lacking side-effect tracking, Scala actually doesn't help you that much when you want to ensure referential transparency. I'd say it's more biased towards OO than FP. > From what I hear, the power of Scala comes from its functional > aspects Look at its case classes, traits, self types, at least. > From my limited experience with Haskell so far, > functional programming requires a different mindset from imperative > languages and frankly, I don't think the industry is ready for it > yet. Haskell is a lazy pure functional language, quite a different beast from Scala. C#'s LINQ seems quite readily accepted by 'the industry', and is, pretty much, functional programming. Excel, the most widely used programming environment in existence, is purely functional (unless you write VBScript to go with it) and a lot of people are comfortable with that. > From a management/strategic perspective, it's probably more risky to > adopt Scala too. Imagine a super-duper Scala programming builds this > awesome enterprise app and leaves. Where are you going to hire the > skills to support, maintain and extend it? It's not Brainfuck. A Java developer with no experience in Scala fixed a problem in my Scala code while I was on holiday with no issues. That said, you do need to have some sort of control over code quality, as anyone can write unreadable code in any language. There is also a growing number of people who will take on work in Scala and I can't imagine the cost will be astronomical. At least, I'm not overpaid! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.