Postcard from the Bleeding Edge

I love Scala. It's so expressive, it's almost not like writing code at all. It's more like just thinking.

I hate Scala. The official beta release of 2.8 is out, and my existing code doesn't compile anymore. I get a bunch of errors related to the way Scala redesigned its collection classes.

And then when I fix those errors, I get a bunch of deprecation warnings related to my favorite Scala feature, the case class. This has me so irked that I screwed up my courage and made my first post to the Scala mailing lists about it.

It's clear that Scala is still a young language that makes substantial changes from release to release, and that it has not yet achieved the near-perfect stability (or is it fossilization?) of Java.

So does this instability mean the end of my romance with Scala? No. I don't have any installed code base to worry about. And to the extent that I understand the changes in Scala 2.8.0, they mostly seem like a good idea. So for now at least, I'm willing to be tossed in the wake of Scala's developers and deal with whatever they come up with.

It was just a lover's quarrel. Scala and I are fine now. At least until a better language comes along.