Now, I've been around the language block a few times, having seen my share of languages. I'm aware and suspicious of the siren-like call new languages have for programmers. They tickle our programming curiosities to the core, offering silver-bullet, paradigm-shifting opportunities for increased productivity. Unfortunately, they require lots of commitment, community, support libraries and momentum to become useful, so one has to be pragmatic when adopting new languages. I tend to error more on the conservative side, but Scala beckoned me to have a closer look. These are my cursory observations.
What first drew me to Scala was its offering of type-safe and concise programming models, based on generics and functional programming. Although the key reason I use C++ is performance, it's the type safety and concise power of templates that keeps me there. I find type-safe languages provide for more readable and maintainable code bases, something that is critical for large and aging projects. Scala seems to push for some of these same ideals.
The first benefit of Scala is immediate: it compiles to Java byte code and is able to utilize Java libraries. This means you can integrate with your existing Java code, use the plethora of existing Java libraries and reuse the man-centuries of work that went into Java VMs. This is somewhat analogous to how C++ can use C. However, C code can (mostly) be compiled as C++ code, Scala code is not anywhere near valid Java code. Although this affords the Scala designers more freedom, it creates another learning curve for Java programmers.
I may have overestimated Scala's intended integration with Java though, as they also have a preliminary link up with .NET working. This could be interesting, or it could split its community focus.
The language itself is very functional and recursive. Functions are first class objects, specialization/type searching is handled via a powerful pattern-matching system and generics seem to be on the right track. This kind of stuff lets you build very interesting DSLs (domain specific languages), something that I think will vital for the future. This means you can build stuff like C#'s LINQ SQL query system into a programming language, without having to update the language -- all done as a library. New web presentation mark-up languages, mini-programming/scripting languages, XML query/processing, etc. could all be done as libraries. Neat stuff.
My very cursory inspections with "javap", the Java class disassembler, shows that Scala is not doing the type specific in-lining I thought it would be (for example, instantiating functions for each specific type T that is used). This means I won't get my performance wishes out of Scala, which is too bad, since that would be more interesting that providing yet another deferred-to-runtime type system (even if it has a nice type-safe compile time checker).
It's an interesting project, and I wish them the best of luck. Programming languages require large investments in time, community and libraries, and they're just beginning this long road and still have a ways to go before I'd commit any large projects to them. This segways into my final, not-really-Scala observation:
Why are the Twitter guys all hot for it?
Twitter (via programmer Alex Payne) seem to be claiming that their notorious problems with scalability and reliability can be traced back to Ruby on Rails. RoR haxxor Obie Fernandez attempts to refute this. Whether RoR can handle the load or the Twitter programmers just don't know how to use it, I don't know or care. What I do know is that if you're going to switch to something else, especially for your critical messaging queuing core, don't jump to something even more obscure and untested.
Alex Payne says Scala is fun and gives him the fuzzies, which is all fine and dandy, but for god's sake man, think about the business here and not the Scala book you're penning. You need something scalable and tested, which usually means old and boring. That's just business. Make Twitter work, sell it, and get (even more?) rich.
