Re: [scala] Scala Marketing Challenge

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@...> wrote:
> I really hate spamming email boxes, but I do think this is important to the
> future of Scala.  I was hoping to get feedback from the community about the
> following:
>
> 1) If you're using Scala at work, what methods did you use to convince
> coworkers/managers to switch?

I'm probably in a slightly different situation from you, but... in my
research lab at my university, two of us began using Scala because we
were sick of Java, which we could do only because we were not really
collaborating with anyone else. My professor caught on, asked for a
demo, and now our lab is discussing (tomorrow!) the future of Scala in
our lab. Said professor seems very pro-Scala, but several other
students aren't keen on learning a new and fancy language.

> 2) What do you think Scala needs to do to "market" itself to the Java
> Community

Not in a good position to comment here.

Regardless, seconding Jim McBeath, I agree that you really need to
assess the strength/interest in learning of your coworkers. If people
who might be using your code really need to/want to stick with Java,
then you're going to have to go out of your way to make sure your code
is reasonably legible to someone who isn't interested in learning
Scala, in addition to being callable from Java code. That might
deprive you of a lot of the fun stuff of Scala.

If you really want to sell Scala, show them the interpreter, and how
you can call up (Java) code while it's being developed and try things
out without having to recompile. That's how I really got drawn to
Scala, and how most of the people in my lab that I've hooked have
gotten interested too.

-- David