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Re: [scala] Scala Marketing Challenge
by Meredith Gregory
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Guys,
Mktg 101 -- don't push: pull. Nobody wants anything you try to push on them. Instead, you tell them they can't have it. You select a small team of young go-getters. Only they are "allowed" to use this "new" technology. You let this team leak anecdotes about their improved productivity. You lionize them and their "killer" app -- which they produced in 1/2 the time they originally estimated to get the job done in Java in 1/10th the lines of code. Rinse. Repeat. Two cycles and your workforce will be clamoring to be "allowed" to use the technology. Cf gmail... or any other viral mktg play. Heck, Dr Seuss' Sneetches is a good primer.
As for "complexity", you can code in pidgin Scala like you can code in pidgin Java. Nobody's forcing you to use higher-order functions or monads or dependent types. Good engineering discipline and ethic combined with common sense and hard won experience are the only reliable means to keep complexity where it needs to be, as near as i can tell.
Best wishes,
--greg
--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
806 55th St NE
Seattle, WA 98105
+1 206.650.3740
http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com
Mktg 101 -- don't push: pull. Nobody wants anything you try to push on them. Instead, you tell them they can't have it. You select a small team of young go-getters. Only they are "allowed" to use this "new" technology. You let this team leak anecdotes about their improved productivity. You lionize them and their "killer" app -- which they produced in 1/2 the time they originally estimated to get the job done in Java in 1/10th the lines of code. Rinse. Repeat. Two cycles and your workforce will be clamoring to be "allowed" to use the technology. Cf gmail... or any other viral mktg play. Heck, Dr Seuss' Sneetches is a good primer.
As for "complexity", you can code in pidgin Scala like you can code in pidgin Java. Nobody's forcing you to use higher-order functions or monads or dependent types. Good engineering discipline and ethic combined with common sense and hard won experience are the only reliable means to keep complexity where it needs to be, as near as i can tell.
Best wishes,
--greg
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:09 AM, Carsten Saager <csaager@...> wrote:
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Jim McBeath <scala@...> wrote:I am not too optimistic anymore. All in all I received positive feedback from 3 people in our company - two of them don't program anymore themselves and the other one left a while ago.Josh,
I believe "The Scala Experiment" is to find out if the additional power
and complexity of Scala can successfully be brought to the masses of Java
programmers. I am not yet sure if I would recommend to my own company
that we be a part of that experiment.
The sad truth is that the majority* of the Java coder force already struggles with the Java syntax. Add a drop of abstraction to the pool and they'll drowning. I still see at some after more than 2 years Java exclusively that they carry habits from VB, PowerBuilder and C-programming with them - a pardigm shift towards more functional programming doesn't seem to be realistic. All you end up with is a bunch of java code in a more compact syntax.
Thus for the masses - I'd rather say no. For dream-teams of medium to large size, definitely yes.
Carsten
* I could be wrong there - but I don't think so
--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
806 55th St NE
Seattle, WA 98105
+1 206.650.3740
http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com
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