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I am a student. I learned Java during the 2nd year. Now I am a fourth year student. I got bored with Java and I started to learn Scala. As I learned it, I found it very complex (although i love it). My question may apply to all new complex languages.
Why scala is so complex?
Is it because we need to create complex software, or am I the only one who thinks it is complex?
@Anantha For the last ten years most universities have been teaching their students Java as first language. I’ve heard of a strikingly high number of cases where it even remains the only language students get to learn while at college – unless they pick up something else on their own, that is.
Purely from a language viewpoint, Java’s three most characterizing features are
Features 1 & 2 make it very similar to a wide array of languages from the Algol/C and C++ family. All of these languages either share similarities in their paradigm or even utilize exactly the same.
C# for instance, despite it’s syntactic differences, Windows as main target OS and .NET framework as “class library”, is very easy to pick up for a Java programmer. That is due to both languages sharing the same programming paradigm.
Scala on the other hand – despite running on the JVM, providing easy interoperability with Java APIs – is what is commonly referred to as a multi-paradigm language. The language provides deep syntactic integration of functional programming language features, yet structures code in an object oriented fashion.
The concept of functional programming – especially once you get into code beyond trivial tutorials – proves to be hard for devs who are only experienced with imperative, OO languages. My personal experience with helping fellow developers get up to speed on Scala et al is that it greatly helps to teach them Scheme first 😉 It’s a nice, small, clean Lisp dialect. It helps with conveying advanced functional concepts. If you decide to give it a shot, I recommend you have a look at “The Little Schemer” and “The Seasoned Schemer”. Once you’re through with both books, I bet you’ll have an easier time looking right through Scala’s syntax and seeing it’s concepts more clearly.
In a nutshell: IMHO it’s not Scala that is hard to learn, the functional programming paradigm is the reason for most devs, who’ve only been exposed to imperative languages, having a hard time getting up to speed.