Scala was the second programming language I learned (the first was Java). I think I'm quite lucky to have picked up a language like Scala so early in my programming journey. It made it very easy for me to learn new programming languages, since it made it easy to support wildly different paradigms (which is also what makes it hard to use in an enterprise environment).
Have error messages improved? I remember trying it few years back but the error messages made it hard to debug. Is it due to use of JVM? Sorry for my lack of knowledge since I rarely program in JVM based languages.
It's interesting that Odersky started with Modula-2 (implementing a Z80 compiler), did a PhD with Wirth, but there discovered that functional programming offered a level of theoretical rigor and mathematical elegance he missed in Wirth's imperative languages. Wirth was generally critical of the complexity and abstraction often associated with functional languages. Rather than rejecting Wirth's pragmatism, he carried it forward by attempting to make functional programming "industry-ready".
Scala is a great language, and functional programming (not pure functional) made me a much better programmer. And functional error handling is a fantastic way to model success and failure, whether you’re using Either or the newer Result type.
I have to both agree and disagree with some of the commenters here regarding why scala declined in usage. There are several reasons.
1. People just got fed up with the push toward pure FP and the complexity. Pure FP and category theory, and effect libraries are just not for the average audience.
2. Android support for Kotlin drastically reduced the momentum as well
3. Spark usage was pretty heavy driver for using Scala and I’m not sure about it’s used as much.
4. Scala became more and more niche as a result of item 1 above.
This being said, I switched to Kotlin for all server side work. I think a language and in particular the ecosystem, needs the vision/stewardship that can offer more practicality and balance in the language design, programming style, tooling, and frameworks. Kotlin just became a simpler language with better support for all of the above.
I can’t think of a better company to drive the development than Jetbrains. I don’t agree with all the choices, but Kotlin overall is a beautiful, simpler language, with all the practicality, and support needed to keep it going.
However, now that Java is making strides in the language features, as compared to historical improvements at the VM level, I’m curious to see how the market share for Kotlin outside of android is going to be affected.
Personally, I still prefer Kotlin for the practical FP support, Ktor as an HTTP server, and pretty good compatibility with Java. And lastly, I think there is enormous potential in multiplatform, as a strong alternative to typescript/react native for mobile.
Disclosure: I am biased as I’m developing some libraries and soon to be made (more) public server framework.
Martin Odersky did a fantastic job with Scala then, and also with Scala 3 IMO from a language design perspective. When I first got into Scala, I was blown away by the language features and the type system. It was the reason I got back into the JVM and the reason for getting into functional programming (not pure FP).
Wanted to get into enterprise-level back-end development in 2025 and was really drawn to Scala, but ultimately learning C# or Kotlin seemed way more practical.
I’m very happy that I learned Scala back in 2018(thanks to my colleague). I quickly realized that this is the language I want to use for work, and after some time, I joined my first Scala project. Five years later Scala is still my favorite language, along with Rust.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 38.6 ms ] threadI have to both agree and disagree with some of the commenters here regarding why scala declined in usage. There are several reasons.
1. People just got fed up with the push toward pure FP and the complexity. Pure FP and category theory, and effect libraries are just not for the average audience.
2. Android support for Kotlin drastically reduced the momentum as well
3. Spark usage was pretty heavy driver for using Scala and I’m not sure about it’s used as much.
4. Scala became more and more niche as a result of item 1 above.
This being said, I switched to Kotlin for all server side work. I think a language and in particular the ecosystem, needs the vision/stewardship that can offer more practicality and balance in the language design, programming style, tooling, and frameworks. Kotlin just became a simpler language with better support for all of the above.
I can’t think of a better company to drive the development than Jetbrains. I don’t agree with all the choices, but Kotlin overall is a beautiful, simpler language, with all the practicality, and support needed to keep it going.
However, now that Java is making strides in the language features, as compared to historical improvements at the VM level, I’m curious to see how the market share for Kotlin outside of android is going to be affected.
Personally, I still prefer Kotlin for the practical FP support, Ktor as an HTTP server, and pretty good compatibility with Java. And lastly, I think there is enormous potential in multiplatform, as a strong alternative to typescript/react native for mobile.
Disclosure: I am biased as I’m developing some libraries and soon to be made (more) public server framework.
And it's faster (or maybe my laptop is faster).