I'd like to hear from the community (or those who read this) on what they think Scala needs to do as a language to become "mainstream". This should be a prioritized list of actions the Scala team can take to ensure that Scala not only enters the spotlight but begins to pull developers from the Java community.
To make an entry, simple supply a link to your website/blog/whatever that has your list as a comment. I'll read through each one at the end of 2 weeks and pick a winner.
2 comments:
To go big, I think Scala has these options (though arguably its out of their control so they might be better off buying all the $1 scratch-offs they can afford):
1. Romance the open source world so folks will say, "Perl, why use Perl when I can do it with Scala?".
2. Find a large corporate backer. Since Sun and Microsoft already have their own languages, I recommend Mark Shuttleworth or Richard Branson. Both have too much money, too much time on their hands, and the uncontrollable kind of egos that just relish a personal language.
3. Give away money. "For every line of Scala you deploy, Bill Gates will send you $2 via email."
4. Achieve the technological superiority that triggers a paradigm shift, such that developers will flock to it because its just better. Though this rarely happens without another precipitating factor, it could happen. However, sitting on top of the JVM or CLR (components of other "big languages") doesn't help the world domination plan, the carpet is just ripe for pulling.
5. Get Google to re-write all their Python in Scala and write up cool hidden (not) Google pages belaboring the wonderful advantages of Scala and how Google is using it to move from world domination to universal domination.
6. Take over the world press, so that Scala is the only language ever written about in trade journals. Soon the other languages will just not sound so good to developers any more.
My 2 cents. Only worth about half that. Please don't flame me because I am beautiful.
Joe
Write a great book for Scala like Groovy In Action is for Groovy.
I was able to get up to speed with
Groovy enough to begin writing
high quality scripts where I might
have used shell script. I could
pull in Java libraries where
needed.
I like the intellectual challenge
of Scala, but I'm looking for a
way to use it in my daily scripting
and programming.
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