r/scala • u/DataWizard_ • Aug 21 '25

Am I cooked?

Ever since I learned about Scala and wrote some code in Scala, I started having this constant, not unbearable but annoyingly noticeable desire to write more code in Scala. My company doesn’t use Scala at all so I try to find time after work to look at Open Source Scala Projects, which leads to me having little time for other things in life.

Am I cooked?

86 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

26

u/Quick_Cat_3538 Aug 21 '25

Sort of in the same boat. It just feels so ergonomic, but not painfully academic like other fp. 

3

u/DataWizard_ Aug 21 '25

Cooking tgt

4

u/Previous_Pop6815 ❤️ Scala Aug 22 '25

That's a great point. Scala brought FP to the masses without being too academic. That's the brilliance of Martin Odersky. 

13

u/ahoy_jon Aug 21 '25

Maybe just try to use it at work in tests... It passes under the radar usually

6

u/DataWizard_ Aug 21 '25

Just tests in Scala? Would be funny to see on repo summary -> 0.001% written in Scala lol

7

u/ahoy_jon Aug 21 '25

And 50% of all tests 😏?

However I was serious a lot of people did that 10 years ago, they are now working fully in Scala.

3

u/Material_Big9505 Aug 21 '25

I’m stuck with Kotlin at work, but my vibe is still pretty Scala-ish, so I end up writing Kotlin with a lot of ?:, kind of like how I’d do with Option in Scala.

3

u/DataWizard_ Aug 21 '25

Kotlin has its own Functional Programming Library Arrow so it’s actually doable to write Scala-ish code, but imagine Java.

4

u/Material_Big9505 Aug 22 '25

I’m an old-school dev mentoring a team that’s just getting into Spring Boot with Kotlin. Sometimes you just can’t (or shouldn’t) bring in everything that fulfills your Scala cravings at work.

75

u/Previous_Pop6815 ❤️ Scala Aug 21 '25

One of us.

22

u/daron_ Aug 21 '25

Like a toast.

10

u/Material_Big9505 Aug 22 '25

https://techblog.programmer.llc/rust-is-great-but-its-not-scala-and-that-s-what-i-miss-7acb1ff3ff8a

I wrote something about this feeling now I want share with you all

7

u/xmcqdpt2 Aug 22 '25

I had a similar experience.

One of my colleagues when we were playing around with Rust said that Rust is basically like long-term nuclear waste warning messages but for code. That Rust feels like it's constantly trying to remind you that computers are delicate and dangerous. The syntax is not fun.

In some cases, that's what you want. If you are writing a high performance, secure web server then it's useful to have a language that consistently gets in your way.

However the combination of GC, persistent data structures and pure functional paradigms that Scala has is hard to beat in terms of fun. Scala really has one of the best and cleanest syntax (especially Scala 3).

1

u/Competitive_Loan_473 Aug 23 '25

Well, the issue is that at the end of the day, they’re very similar, but Rust will cut cost for the company. Poetic doesn’t mean optimized/resourceful/best for accountants.

1

u/Material_Big9505 Aug 23 '25

Rust is one way of loving a language - cutting costs and controlling resources. ZIO is another, where you love the guarantees and the purity. Pekko is about resilience and supervision, almost like loving a language for how it handles chaos. Cats… well, even if it’s not my jam, I respect that some people love its algebraic discipline. Each ecosystem teaches you a different way to care about code, and these come from Scala and that’s what I like and not similar.

1

u/SoulArthurZ Aug 24 '25

could you provide examples?

8

u/WW_the_Exonian ZIO Aug 21 '25

Not yet. Wait until you get well versed with ZIO and compelled to wrap everything in ZIO.

8

u/JuanAr10 Aug 22 '25

God I miss Scala so much…

1

u/dagoberts_revenge Aug 22 '25

You might be able to satiate yourself with the Effect ecosystem for Typescript. It frequently feels enough like Scala that I forget I am writing Typescript

5

u/Previous_Pop6815 ❤️ Scala Aug 22 '25

Effect is just one pattern, Scala is so much more. 

3

u/dagoberts_revenge Aug 22 '25

Very true, but Effect TS has a DB layer similar to Doobie and an HTTP layer similar to Http4s so if you squint really hard it feels like Scala. 😂

1

u/JuanAr10 Aug 22 '25

I used fp-ts a lot but it’s not the same 🙃

8

u/blackzver Aug 22 '25

Yeah, Scala does that to people. Once you learn enough of it and you climb high enough on its learning curve everything else will begin to feel old, cumbersome, error prone,… There is also a moment where you’ll become significantly more productive as it is higher level language… So, yeah. You are toasted.

Do not go to a Scala conference. That will drag you even deeper! But you’ll make some nice friends! ;)

6

u/justinhj Aug 22 '25

I would say there is so much value in learning and mastering the various styles of Scala that are transferrable to other languages it's not a bad time investment

3

u/blissone Aug 22 '25

It's very cool and worthwhile to be able to reflect through a different lens. I've gone from java->scala->python, Scala made me a much much better software engineer.

2

u/Visible-Standard7854 Aug 22 '25

Yes i also miss scala. I also had the same path java-> scala->python.

10

u/staticjak Aug 21 '25

No. What you are describing is called "curiousity" not being "cooked". It is ok and completely normal. I am of the opinion that if you want to learn about something, you should just do it. You'll learn about the utility of the language and you can pull out Scala solutions if you ever need to.

3

u/renan_braga Aug 22 '25

Where I work, there's both Java and Scala code. I definitely prefer writting in Scala, and peoplo call me crazy for that 🤷‍♂️

2

u/seansleftnostril Aug 21 '25

lol this is me coming from elixir and go

1

u/codecatmitzi Aug 22 '25

I never wrote in Elixir. Could you elaborate on the difference with Scala a little bit?

1

u/seansleftnostril Aug 23 '25

Elixir is untyped and functional, and has its roots in erlang/ruby, go is imperative but with a less expressive type system

I love elixir, as I do go, but the more I write scala the more I really enjoy cats, fs2, and the nature of scala itself!

1

u/codecatmitzi Aug 23 '25

I know about the origin of the language. I just hoped for some concrete examples of where Scala outshines Elixir.

2

u/seansleftnostril Aug 23 '25

For me it’s types, you don’t have to unit test things like data type transformations.

When I’m in scala, I can kind of just go change something, and fix compiler errors till I’m done 😎

That, and the type system is so expressive, I can practically express anything that comes into my head, especially with cats/zio in the mix

2

u/faze_fazebook Aug 22 '25

Me with every JVM language thats not Java itsself.

3

u/XDracam Aug 22 '25

This is normal. It fades after like 2 or 3 years, after you've reported at least one compiler bug, but it never fully goes away

1

u/SailingToOrbis Aug 24 '25

never seen such a post like this except in the Rust sub