Stopped reading after "strong typing is better than weak typing". Well, it is not. He/she rules out perfectly valid programming languages because of this personal opinion nowhere near a fact (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/125367/dynamic-type-langu...). In fact, it directly contradicts his/her second point. I understand the author wants to drift it towards Scala, but make an effort and choose the right arguments!
EDIT: well, at least the author states it is an "100% Opinionated View". And I finally read it all, but still not very convincing.
And this comment is also an "100% Opinionated View" of course :)
If we were to discuss everything in this article, starting with dynamic vs static typing, we'd still be here 3 months from now :). Which is why it is opinionated.
The problem with that section isn't so much that it is opinionated, it's that you can't really have a sensible discussion about typing on just a dynamic vs. static axis.
At the very least you should address the implications of strong vs. weak typing, and you should probably address the strength and nature of the type systems, also. After all, saying that both C and Haskell are statically largely misses the point.
Yeah, I was just going to edit my comment to say "well, at least the author states it is 100% Opinionated View" :) But you could skip that part and have more arguments, although without it you couldn't easily rule out some languages (e.g. LISP). I have to admit I'm also biased as a Clojure fan, and I find Scala too verbose and less functional than Clojure. Oh and btw, I read it all :P
I was weary when I saw the headline but clicked it to see if I could learn something new.
The article seems written for newbie programmers (HTML/CSS in a programming language list? seriously? And who is, nowadays,seriously considering fortran for a new project?) and have them believe a series of opinions.
Like the cartoon at the beginning, it seems like the author is just another lemming calling for other lemmings to follow him.
[EDIT] Finished the article. It is a blatant advertisement for Scala. The support for Java sounds so false that, if Scala didn't use the JVM is would be discarded like the other languages.
To choose a language you need to make a decision based on the project first, not the language's features. The language should match the project. How big is the project? Where/how will it be deployed/run? Is performance a concern? How long should the development take? Does it have special needs? (concurrency, parallelism, 3D grphics, real-time, etc...).
"HTML/CSS in a programming language list? seriously?"
I just googled "programming languages you should learn" - 3rd result:
http://www.sitepoint.com/whats-best-programming-language-lea... ("What’s the Best Programming Language to Learn in 2015?")
4th "Programming Language" is...: CSS!
You know that's nonsense, but a newbie doesn't
That's the problem. By including it you mean this article is (also) for newbies. And is an opinionated, biased article. The author is fostering more "lemming programmers".
> Finished the article. It is a blatant advertisement for Scala
I like Scala, but the features I like in it, eg pattern matching or tail recursion, these things don't even exist in this article.
So I'm not sure it's advertisement, it feels more like it's an anti-ad, actually. If the argument for me to use a language is that it is statically typed, man, that language must not be good at all! Static or dynamic typing is part of language philosophy, it makes sense to have dynamic typing in Python, as it makes sense not having it in Java. Python philosophy is pretty coherent, productive and fun, and dynamic typing is a part of that. It just doesn't feel like a reasonable argument.
I did read it, and many others like it. This isn't "deep" at all, it's about what color coordinates best with your problem space and development practices and developer personalities.
EDIT: well, at least the author states it is an "100% Opinionated View". And I finally read it all, but still not very convincing.
And this comment is also an "100% Opinionated View" of course :)