Posts Tagged ‘MartinOdersky’
[ScalaDaysNewYork2016] Scala’s Road Ahead: Shaping the Future of a Versatile Language
Scala, a language renowned for blending functional and object-oriented programming, stands at a pivotal juncture as outlined by its creator, Martin Odersky, in his keynote at Scala Days New York 2016. Martin’s address explored Scala’s unique identity, recent developments like Scala 2.12 and the Scala Center, and the experimental Dotty compiler, offering a vision for the language’s evolution over the next five years. This talk underscored Scala’s commitment to balancing simplicity, power, and theoretical rigor while addressing community needs.
Scala’s Recent Milestones
Martin began by reflecting on Scala’s steady growth, evidenced by increasing job postings and Google Trends for Scala tutorials. The establishment of the Scala Center marks a significant milestone, providing a hub for community collaboration with support from industry leaders like Lightbend and Goldman Sachs. Additionally, Scala 2.12, set for release in mid-2016, optimizes for Java 8, leveraging lambdas and default methods to produce more compact and faster code. This release, with 33 new features and contributions from 65 committers, reflects Scala’s vibrant community and commitment to progress.
The Scala Center: Fostering Community Collaboration
The Scala Center, as Martin described, serves as a steward for Scala, focusing on projects that benefit the entire community. By coordinating contributions and fostering industrial partnerships, it aims to streamline development and ensure Scala’s longevity. While Martin deferred detailed discussion to Heather Miller’s keynote, he emphasized the center’s role in unifying efforts to enhance Scala’s ecosystem, making it a cornerstone for future growth.
Dotty: A New Foundation for Scala
Central to Martin’s vision is Dotty, a new Scala compiler built on the Dependent Object Types (DOT) calculus. This theoretical foundation, proven sound after an eight-year effort, provides a robust basis for evaluating new language features. Dotty, with a leaner codebase of 45,000 lines compared to the current compiler’s 75,000, offers faster compilation and simplifies the language’s internals by encoding complex features like type parameters into a minimal subset. This approach enhances confidence in language evolution, allowing developers to experiment with new constructs without compromising stability.
Evolving Scala’s Libraries
Looking beyond Scala 2.12, Martin outlined plans for Scala 2.13, focusing on revamping the standard library, particularly collections. Inspired by Spark’s lazy evaluation and pair datasets, Scala aims to simplify collections while maintaining compatibility. Proposals include splitting the library into a core module, containing essentials like collections, and a platform module for additional functionalities like JSON handling. This modular approach would enable dynamic updates and broader community contributions, addressing the challenges of maintaining a monolithic library.
Addressing Language Complexity
Martin acknowledged Scala’s reputation for complexity, particularly with features like implicits, which, while powerful, can lead to unexpected behavior if misused. To mitigate this, he proposed style guidelines, such as the principle of least power, encouraging developers to use the simplest constructs necessary. Additionally, he suggested enforcing rules for implicit conversions, limiting them to packages containing the source or target types to reduce surprises. These measures aim to balance Scala’s flexibility with usability, ensuring it remains approachable.
Future Innovations: Simplifying and Strengthening Scala
Martin’s vision for Scala includes several forward-looking features. Implicit function types will reduce boilerplate by abstracting over implicit parameters, while effect systems will treat side effects like exceptions as capabilities, enhancing type safety. Nullable types, modeled as union types, address Scala’s null-related issues, aligning it with modern languages like Kotlin. Generic programming improvements, inspired by libraries like Shapeless, aim to eliminate tuple limitations, and better records will support data engines like Spark. These innovations, grounded in Dotty’s foundations, promise a more robust and intuitive Scala.