It's interesting because I found the original article quite vapid, but the takeaway of the top two comments of the discussion quite enlightening: the exact same set of features sound like heaven to some and hell to others.
Perhaps Scala is the Napolean Dynamite [1] of programming languages.
Personally I'm also indecisive about Scala because while I'd take Scala over Java any day; I'm still hoping that something more elegant will become the next 'enterprise standard' (and I'll be programming Clojure instead whenever I get the chance.)
Scala reminds of the saying that just because the American SUV is the most elegant solution for making a family vehicle that looks masculine; it still doesn't mean they're not ugly.
Scala feels a bit like that SUV: Just because it's the most elegant solution to getting something Haskell'ish shoehorned into the JVM still doesn't make the end result elegant.
Assuming F# is included I actually agree with that to a large degree except for the fact that the division between C# vs. OSS languages is more ideological than anything else.
Sadly F# is taking C++'s place on Visual Studio's list of not so loved languages.
Although many financial systems are picking it up, and a wealthy community is building around it in the .NET world, Microsoft development tools team still seems not sure how to steer it.
MS painted themselves into a corner with their marketing message. They can't really come out and admit F# is superior to C# in practically every sense. Apparently now, the C# lead designer seems more interested in patching up JavaScript than actually catching C# up to the state-of-the-art.
Meanwhile, MS has marketed F# as "financial and scientific". Remember the F# team lead is also the main force behind getting decent generics into the CLR, a concept MS corp had dismissed as "academic". So it's no surprise they aren't continuing that line of thinking.
> Scala reminds of the saying that just because the American SUV is the most elegant solution for making a family vehicle that looks masculine; it still doesn't mean they're not ugly.
Way off topic for the main point, but the actual problem the SUV originally solved was "how to make a mass-market passenger vehicle that counts as a 'light truck' rather than an 'auto' for various safety and other standards."
Perhaps Scala is the Napolean Dynamite [1] of programming languages.
Personally I'm also indecisive about Scala because while I'd take Scala over Java any day; I'm still hoping that something more elegant will become the next 'enterprise standard' (and I'll be programming Clojure instead whenever I get the chance.)
Scala reminds of the saying that just because the American SUV is the most elegant solution for making a family vehicle that looks masculine; it still doesn't mean they're not ugly.
Scala feels a bit like that SUV: Just because it's the most elegant solution to getting something Haskell'ish shoehorned into the JVM still doesn't make the end result elegant.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?...