I've been asked to run a workshop and coding dojo soon for people to try out Scala and try to build something with it. The attendees are all going to be new to Scala, and could come from any of a number of languages (I'm presuming they can code in at least one mainstream language - I'm including syntax comparisons with Java, C#, Python and Ruby).
Part of the appeal of Scala is that it's practical - you can use it as a drop-in "power Java" (Java with less syntactical clutter, closures, immutability, FP, traits, singleton objects, nifty XML handling, type inference etc.) that still runs on the JVM (and on the .NET CLR supposedly) and doesn't require you to change build tools, server infrastructure, libraries, IDEs and so on. Most of the katas I've seen have been fun but not 'real world' - mathematical challenges like Project Euler and so on. These don't seem appropriate as we're trying to explore the use of it as a practical, real world language that people could consider using for both hacking and work, and because people aren't necessarily going to be too familiar with either the deeper parts of the Scala syntax or necessarily of the concepts behind functional programming.
So, has anyone come across any more practical, everyday katas rather than arithmetical 'problem solving' ones? Katas, that is, that can test whether the language, libraries and tools can satisfy the use cases of the actual day-to-day programming most people have to do rather than testing out. (Not that the impractical ones aren't fun, but just not appropriate for the kind of thing I've been asked to run.)
If I can't find good examples, I'm thinking that it might be useful to try and build something like a library catalogue - the event is for programmers who primarily work on building infrastructure for universities (and in education and culture - museums, galleries, schools, libraries and so on). It's a bit boring though, but it's the sort of thing that the attendees work on in their day-to-day existence. Any suggestions?
There is a creative commons licensed introductory training course with hands-on exercises here:
http://github.com/javaBin/scala-training-slides
http://github.com/javaBin/scala-training-code
The slides are in Open Office format. If you don't have this installed, you can upload them to SlideShare, which will convert them for online viewing.
Most of the programming examples in my blog are, effectively, coding dojo exercises. Particularly the matrices series, but also the puzzles and 99 beers. Now, don't disregard the matrices series as being "mathematical", because the problems I concern myself in it are related to the construction of classes in Scala, not to doing fancy algorithms. In fact, I pretty much skip over the mathematical algorithms themselves.
Now, 99 Scala Problems and pretty much everything from Project Euler are nice exercises for the functional part of Scala, but I understand that not to be your emphasis. I do recommend retronym's answer. Rosetta Code, not being functionally oriented, might have more general examples. There are many with Scala examples, of course, though you may wish to consider other tasks as well, for ideas.
There's lot of cool things to learn about Scala, but one has to be careful at beginner level. For instance, I would not speak of dependency injection (self types and the cake pattern) or of type classes (the pattern that simulates such with implicits).
Do look as well at the material on the Scala Lang site, particularly the Scala by Example document.
EDIT
I have now overseen several Scala dojos, so here's a bit of stuff I've learned from then:
Problems: they have to be fun, not-quite-easy, not-that-hard, and that has to be everyone's opinion.
We use the Dojo Puzzles site, which is in Portuguese so it won't be of use for most people here. If there's a similar site in English, I'd love to hear about it.
The way it works is you ask for a random problem, look it over and discuss to see if you'll pick it up or not, and then indicate by saying you'll use it, you'll not use it, or maybe you'll use it but you'd like to see another one. This vote gets registered and you can see how many people picked up a problem, which helps deciding whether to pick it up or not in first place.
Scala knowledge: it turns out it's not that important to introduce key concepts of Scala language beforehand, particularly if some of the participants have basic knowledge.
In my experience, setting up the testing environment with a trivial "pass" test and explaining how people should write the tests is often enough to get people started. If you feel someone is struggling to write something, give a quick explanation and get on with it.
Teaching Scala: if you do set out to teach Scala, keep lessons short and follow up with a dojo. In this case, keep a set of dojo problems that are adequate to the lesson, and, depending on how many lessons you want in one day, short.
It helps imposing artificial constraints on how one must solve a problem. Some examples of constraints I have put in practice are no classes and single-expression methods (that is, no multiple statements or val/var declarations). The point of these constraints is making it impossible for people to solve the problem in the way they are used to, which gets them to explore the language in search of alternatives.
I have the final results of three dojos done at my current job in this repository.
At the moment we are using the Randori Kata format, but without fixed time or break, and with retrospective at the end of the dojo, not at the beginning of the next. This, however, is just were we are currently at -- we have experimented many variations, and we are still evolving.
Perhaps you could have a look at the Ruby Quiz material for inspiration.
Take a look at Scala by example from Martin Odersky (creator of scala)
Related
Despite having read "Programming in Scala" several times, I still often finds important Scala constructs that were not explained in the book, like
#uncheckedVariance
#specialized
and other strange constructs like
new { ... } // No class name!
and so on.
I find this rather frustrating, considering that the book was written by the Scala "inventor" himself, and others.
I tried to read the language specification, but it's made for academics, rather than practicing programmers. It made my head spin.
Is there a website for "Everything "Programming in Scala" Didn't Tell You" ?
There was the daily-scala Blog, but it died over a year ago.
Currently, we're working on a central documentation site for scala-lang.org. We're hoping that this solves a lot of the documentation issues that new users face. More details on this effort can be found at http://heather.miller.am/blog/2011/07/improving-scala-documentation/, but in summary...
Believe it or not, there are a lot of documents that the Scala team has produced but which simply aren't in HTML or are otherwise difficult to find. Such as Martin's new Collections API, his document on Arrays, or Adriaan's on Type Constructor Inference.
One goal of such a site is to collect all of this documentation in one place, in a searchable, organized, and easy-to-navigate format.
Another goal is to collect excellent community documentation out there, and to put it in the same place as well. For that, we are actively looking for quality (article/overview-like) material with maintainers. Examples include the Scala Style Guide, and Daniel Spiewak's Scala for Java Refugees.
Yet another goal is to make it easy for contributors to participate- so the site is built from RST source, which will live in a documentation-only github repo at https://github.com/scala/scala-docs.
So, in short, something better is on it's way, and contributors are very welcome to participate.
EDIT: http://docs.scala-lang.org is now live.
Several documents considered to be rather detailed or even obscure are already available. This includes all "Scala Improvement Proposals" (the proposals produced when new language features are suggested, and which are usually very detailed, and written by the implementers themselves). Also available is the entire glossary from Programming in Scala, Scala cheatsheets, amongst many other documents. The bottom-line of the site is to be community-focused and contribution-friendly-- so, free, and totally open. Suggested topics to cover are also welcome.
Take a look at scalaz and typelevel librairies (shapeless, spire, etc.), they rely on many advanced features of Scala.
*scalaz was for a time part of typelevel, but it is no more the case.
Josh Sureth's book goes a little beyond the usual. It's not as far as I'd like but I'm not his core audience - still, there's a lot of good stuff in there.
http://www.manning.com/suereth
Scala IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/scala
Scala forum: http://scala-forum.org/
Blogs: Just look at http://planetscala.com/
Programming Scala (Wampler, Payne): http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596155957/
Programming in Scala (Odersky, Venners, Spoon) - good but Scala 2.8: http://www.artima.com/pins1ed/
The new documentation page is online:
http://docs.scala-lang.org/
I've kept a library of advanced Scala resources, primarily talks and blog posts. It's updated pretty regularly as I find new, interesting content.
Happy to add new links to it if anyone has recommendations.
Try to read SBT Source: https://github.com/harrah/xsbt/wiki
Its a good exercise. Also check out the book 'scala in depth' : http://www.manning.com/suereth/ by
Joshua D. Suereth
I believe there are a lot of good answer here. But as a sharing of experience. I have been coding Scala for 2 year (not my full time job), and been progressively better at it. My project is 97% Scala, and I have been able to do most of it with:
Programming Scala
The scala-user list
Stackoverflow
This cover most of the need for the "user" side of Scala, meaning all you need to create working application. However if you want to write some more complex code, or create powerful typed libraries you definitely need more.
If you want to go beyond the basics and are prepared to delve deeply into type system, and libraries, then the alternatives I use:
Use the community, scala enthusiast are really nice. I have worked with folks form Specs, Scalaz and Lift.
IRC is really good and some of the core contributors to some of the big library frequently show up.
Jump to source code, but don't try to understand everything. Scala type system can be daunting, however you normally don't need to understand 100% of it to use it.
If you really need to get into the nitty gritty details, hit the language specs, development list, and get to know the key people.
However you can really be very effective in Scala without needing to understand every single bit of the language.
Now i know that this one is actually not a very technical question but one that has been bothering me for some time. Actually we are using a lot of C++ and PHP at our company and some of our developers are really hoping for a new and modern language to come by to help us getting more productive. I have been talking about what scala can do and the other coders seem to gain some interest in the language. The tough job is, how do you convince your boss to consider scala as a language for the company. I saw the presentation "Sneaking Scala into your company", but it deals with the situation that you are using Java at your company which we don't.
How do you fight of the usual "that is just esoteric stuff" and "we can already do that in $LANGUAGE" arguments. I was planing to give a talk about Scala, and since I don't have much time I need ideas how to get people interested in the language rather then setting of reactions like "currying? we can already do something like this with boost::bind".
How did you guys do it?
Regards,
raichoo
EDIT: Gave my talk yesterday, people were very excited. My company is going to give it a try! Thanks for all your suggestions.
If you don't already have killer arguments, what are you basing your reasoning on that Scala will make your company more productive?
Don't like something then hunt for reasons to use it at work. Let the reasons speak for themselves..
"A hammer looking for nails"
Using it to do some stuff around the side, as datamigrations, testing and similar things will make sure the necessary experience is built and can give it some exposure.
ScalaTest is really nice to help with acceptance/integration testing. (Yes, I know it is nice for unit testing, but I do not see that immediately happening with C++/PHP target code, and it would probably be unwise).
Proof of Concept and other Prototypes are great for 2 reasons
1) It showcases the capabilities
2) You are certain they will be thrown away if you have to reimplement them in C++/PHP
Now a bad time to introduce Scala would be when you REALLY need it : hopes will be high, it will not immediately work as intended, hopes are dashed and everybody will blame Scala. As a result it will be burnt for a long time in the organisation.
Sooner or later some suit will think it was his idea to introduce Scala and use it on a formal project. If that project is moderately successful, then it is sold.
These kind of changes are complicated people issues, and the harder you push, the harder you will face push-back. On the other hand the persistent mind can move mountains.
Redo some of your work related code in Scala and compare KLOC, code structure and performence, if it looks and works better, show it to your peers and your managers.
In other words:
Talk is cheap. Show me the code.
-- Torvalds, Linus (2000-08-25)
In case of our company (and I assume, many companies share the same scenario), move to Scala (from Java) was initiated by tech people, who 1. wanted to work more productive writing code (living in the 21st century utilize modern approaches), 2. have less troubles building concurrent applications (Actors concept promoted by Scala is a way simpler than Java thread-based concurrency) 2.1 have a simpler way of building scalable staged event driven architectures.
In our company, transition to Scala was more or less simple, because Scala was literlly sold to business people as a library to Java :) -> from their POV, we're still using the same platform (JVM), application servers, etc., but developers are having more fun from their work, and therefore, are more inspired and work more efficiently.
Maybe you could pitch Scala by showing off the suite of tools that is used for development? For example, if you are not already using Eclipse in your company, show your execs a demo of what a modern IDE can do for your productivity.
There is a book called "Fearless Change" (Linda Rising) that describes a pattern language for "powerless leaders" (I LOVE that role title!). SE-radio had a really motivating interview with the author: http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2009-06/episode-139-fearless-change-linda-rising. Listen up on that interview to collect a few non-technical strategies that can help you in this struggle!
I haven't used Scala yet for any real business code, but I know people who have.
One group used it to write a tool to analyze log files. So they didn't use it for mission-critical business code, but for a non-critical tool to support the project.
Another person I know is an architect and he just went and wrote some Scala code on his own for some production code without telling his manager. After the code was deployed successfully he did tell it. One of the things he mentioned is that because Scala runs on the JVM, the people who support the application don't even notice - to them, Scala is just another library that's included with the application (they were already used to the JVM). Ofcourse this approach is risky and not everybody will be in the position or be willing to do this.
You could start small - use it as your personal preferred scripting language for small things that you need yourself. Tell your fellow developers about it and make them enthusiasts too. If they also start using it then you can step it up to make some side code for your project (such as for example that log analyser tool).
This isn't a really easy task. I would concentrate on the fact that you will be able to produce code and therefore products faster and with a higher quality. That's always the two reasons, business wants to hear from you and will listen to.
Maybe you can show an example of 1-2 very small projects you did in your company with C++/PHP and compare the effort, quality etc. with a similar/the same implemenation in Scala? This would be very impressive and should also convince people who are not on the coding side.
There was a very good talk at Scala Days 2010 by David Copeland:
Sneaking Scala into your organisation
The executive summary: Testing. You can use Scala for testing without affecting release code.
we are considering Scala for a new Project within our company. We have some Junior Programmers with only PHP knowledge, and we are in doubt that they can handle Scala. What are your opinions? Some say: "Scala is a complicated beast!", some say: "It's easy once you got it." Maybe someone has real-world experience?
"My coworkers will not understand Scala" is simultaneously overstating its difficulty and insulting your coworkers.
Scala is not that difficult. It's just another programming language. Any trouble that junior programmers have with Scala is going to be more or less the same trouble they would have with any other language.
Your coworkers are smart. Of course, I don't know them, but it's a pretty safe bet unless your company is the kind of organisation that hires stupid people, in which case, you have bigger problems.
That said, at my company we have some core products developed in Scala, and we don't find that people have any more trouble with it than Java. The code is generally more clear and concise, easier to generalise and reuse, etc.
I guess Scala could be used as a "beginners" language. Even though there are tricky ideas behind it, you dont have to use/explain them in the beginning. If you explain pure OO with Scala, I would say it is straight forward and easily understandable. As Scala reduces a lot of code overhead from other languages it might even be easier to learn concepts with Scala than with Java/C++.
A major drawback I see with Scala as a beginner language is the lack of documentation. Don't get this wrong, the official Scala doc is very good and also the few books that are available are quite useful to get the details of the language, but those have not been written for beginners. For example in Java you find hundreds of books titled something like "Learning OO with Java" you wont find that for Scala which may be a show stopper.
As Hannes mentioned, only do new language introductions within research projects and not productive or even flagship projects. If you have some juniors, that makes the situation even better, take some internal tool, you always wanted and needed and let them create it during a research project. This is also a nice opportunity to experiment with different development-processes. And your juniors most probably like to be challenged and will deliver a good prototype and a very well proofed opinion if Scala can be used as a beginner language.
I believe that most people moving to Scala are experienced and enthusiastic coders. I'd suggest that you get in-house experience with a Scala project with your senior programmers first before forming a strategy for mentoring your junior coders. I'd also suggest that you only involve people who are eager to join in.
I would advocate it. But with the proviso that you have clear guidelines on what language features are acceptable for your team. For example, coding primarily in an imperative style (which is familiar for Java-trained people), or perhaps limiting the employment of recursion or closures.
Also plan for seniors to mentor the juniors. This may take the form of any combination of: pair programming, code reviews, info sessions, regular discussion forums, etc.
The opportunity that scala presents for vastly improved coding on the JVM is too great to pass up. When your seniors get into it I would not be surprised if they find renewed passion for development. When your juniors get into it they will be learning best practice JVM development from the start.
If you choose to go this route, perhaps they'll find easier to use the Scalate framework than a more traditional one like Lift, since it allows mixing HTML with Scala, much in the same way as PHP works.
Scala is a very 'normal' programming language. Any programmer should be able to learn this language. The people that have difficulties learning Scala mostly are experienced with imperative languages and are surprised by the functional concepts. So unexperienced programmers may learn it even faster. In my opinion should be no problem, to assign it to juniors. From a management point of view, I would assign a junior and a senior developer as a team (or more of both, depending on the size of the project).
I think it depends whats more importent for you. If you want to learn as possible about OO Programming and the standard stuff its a bad idea.
But what you really give them is a opportunity to learn something really cool and unique. Witch can be good motivation. Scala has many cool stuff in it. If you can handle Scala you can handle a lot of otherstuff as well.
Talk to the Programmers (all of them) and tell them why you wanne to use scala. Ask if the have to motivation to make and learn something not everybody can do and go the extra mile?
If the are go with it!
My initial thought would be that Scala will be too heavy for them but then I guess because Scala is an OO/Imperitave/Functional hybrid, one could introduce them to the OO/Imperative part of scala until their comfortable, but then again they will probably have bad PHP habits in Scala since scala authors mostly prefer the functional style over the imperative one.
So, it could work, but I would do it for a research project, and definately not for a flagship one.
Edit: Perhaps this should be said also: It seems that functional/OO hybrids like Scala is becoming more popular especially because of how functional languages handles parallel processing as opposed to how we know it in languages like in Java. The amount of cores found in a chip is increasing rapidly, so this is important. However, mentioning PHP, it seems that you are developing web server scripts where threading is less important. PHP doesn't even have threads.
This raises another point. Do you want to develop Scala Web applications i.e. Lift. If so then you have a doubled up learning curve which should also be considered.
Imagine that you would have picked Java and asked whether they could handle Java. If your answer is they could, then they can probably handle Scala.
Scala is only marginally more difficult due to:
No great IDE support. The support ranges from poor to good. Not necessarily an issue for a PHP programmer.
Documentation not as rich as Java
Both Java and Scala have new challenges for a PHP programmer (JVM, new libraries, compiled language, statically typed).
I don't think Scala is a complicated beast, but you do need to understand some of the syntactic sugar and design principles, which would be true of learning Java as well.
Yes, if...
Strategic decision has been made to go with Scala
Company can handle the hit (financial and time) that will come from the steep learning curve.
No, if...
No senior Java, C# or C++ programmers can be put on the project too
Can't find a Scala programmer to act as a lead
Programmers don't have the patience to learn Scala or deal with a language where Jars (libraries) are scattered all over the place, rather than in one or two neat packages like PHP.
*Note: if the junior programmers were C++, C#, or Java Software Engineers rather than PHP, then my answer would be different like, Go for it!
I would not recommend it. My experience of Scala is only from homebrew projects, but I would imagine the currently lousy IDE support, quite frequent API changes and a very flexible syntax (that allows one to hang himself and everybody else participating in the project) would cause a lot of problems in a bigger, more official project.
Give them IntelliJ and throw 'em in the deep end.
Here is a blog post I recently stumbled upon:
http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2008/07/java-is-too-academic.html
It shows that even Java can be too academic to be understood by programmers which have no experience in functional programming. On the other hand, Scala allows to write code the "imperative way", so you can avoid all the FP stuff if you do not understand it. In my opinion, Scala is much more concise than Java, so I guess a "junior programmer" should be able to handle it.
I like C# 3.0 features especially lambda expressions, auto implemented properties or in suitable cases also implicitly typed local variables (var keyword), but when my boss revealed that I am using them, he asked me not to use any C# 3.0 features in work. I was told that these features are not standard and confusing for most developers and its usefulness is doubtful. I was restricted to use only C# 2.0 features and he is also considering forbidding anonymous methods.
Since we are targeting .NET Framework 3.5, I cannot see any reason for these restrictions. In my opinion, maybe the only disadvantage is that my few co-workers and the boss (also a programmer) would have to learn some basics of C# 3.0 which should not be difficult. What do you think about it? Is my boss right and am I missing something? Are there any good reasons for such a restriction in a development company where C# is a main programming language?
I have had a similar experience (asked not to use Generics, because the may be confusing to my colleagues).
The fact is, that we now use generics and non of my colleagues are having a problem with them. They may not have grasped how to create generic classes, but they sure do understand how to use them.
My opinion on that is that any developer can learn how to use these language features. They may seem advanced at first but as people get used to them the shock of newness lessens.
The main argument for using these features (or any new language features) is that this is a simple and easy way to help my colleagues advance their skills, rather than stagnating.
As for your particular problem - not using lambdas. Lots of the updates to the BCL have overloads that take delegates as parameters - these are in many cases most easily expressed as lambdas, not using them this way is ignoring some of the new and updated uses of the BCL.
In regards to the issues with your peers not being able to learn lambdas - I found that Jon Skeets C# in depth deals with how they evolved from delegates in a manner that was easy to follow and real eye opener. I would recommend you get a copy for your boss and colleagues.
You boss is going to need to understand that language (and other) improvements are designed to give developers more capabilities, and make them more efficient in completing the task at hand, and that if he is not going to allow them for unknown reasons then:
The development team isn't producing at its greatest potential.
The company isn't benefiting from increased efficiency/productivity.
like others have said developers aren't worth their salt if they can't keep up with some of the latest improvements in the language that they are using on a daily basis. I suspect your boss hasn't done much coding lately and it is his inability to understand the latest language improvements that has motivated this decision.
I was told that these features are not standard and confusing for most developers and its usefulness is doubtful. I was restricted to use only C# 2.0 features and he is also considering forbidding anonymous methods.
Presumably roughly translates to your boss meaning...
These features are confusing for me, and I don't find them useful because I don't understand them.
Which is fairly symptomatic of the Blub paradox (well, or just sheer laziness). Either way there's no merit in what he's saying, and you should start looking for another job if he continues down that road.
If the project is strictly C# 3+ from now on, then you would not break the build by including these items. However, before using them you should be aware of the following:
You can't use them if the project lead gets to make the decision and votes no.
Other than that, you should use them where it makes the code significantly easier to maintain.
You should not use them in ways that are confusing, or unnecessary in the sense that they do not significantly improve the maintainability of the code. This does mean you should not use them where the code is effectively the same or barely improved.
If Microsoft didn't define the standard and these were features that they added to a non-Microsoft language, I would say your boss might have a point. However, since Microsoft defines the language and uses these very features in implementing significant parts of .NET 3.5 (and 4.0), I'd say that you'd be foolish to ignore them. You may not choose to use some of them -- var, for instance, may not be acceptable in all environments due to coding standards -- but a blanket policy of avoiding new features seems unreasonable.
The trickier bit is when should you start using new features, because they can be confusing and may delay development. In general, I choose to use new language features and platform elements on new projects. I often avoid using them on projects that are currently in development when the feature/framework enhancement comes out, deferring until the next project. On a long project, I might introduce them at a significant milestone if the amount of rearchitecting is small or the feature is worth the changes. Normally, I'd wait until the project is due for significant changes anyway and then evaluate if refactoring to newer features is warranted.
The jury is still out on the long term consequences of some features, but if their main rationale is 'it is confusing to other developers' or something similar than I would be concerned about the quality of the talent.
I like C# 3.0 features especially
lambda expressions, auto implemented
properties or in suitable cases also
implicitly typed local variables (var
keyword), but when my boss revealed
that I am using them, he asked me not
to use any C# 3.0 features in work. I
was told that these features are not
standard and confusing for most
developers and its usefulness is
doubtful.
He's got a point.
Following that line of thought, let's make a rule against generic collections since List<T> doesn't make any sense (angle brackets? wtf?).
While we're at it, let's eliminate all interfaces (when are you ever gonna need a class without any implementation?).
Hell, let's go ahead eliminate inheritance since its so tricky these days (is-a? has-a? can't we all just be friends?).
And use of recursion is grounds for dismissal (Foo() invokes Foo()? Surely you must be joking!).
Errrm... back to reality.
Its not that C# 3.0 features are confusion to programmers, its that the features are confusing to your boss. He's familiar with one technology and stubbornly refuses to part with it. You're about to enter the Twilight Zone Blub Paradox:
Programmers get very attached to their
favorite languages, and I don't want
to hurt anyone's feelings, so to
explain this point I'm going to use a
hypothetical language called Blub.
Blub falls right in the middle of the
abstractness continuum. It is not the
most powerful language, but it is more
powerful than Cobol or machine
language.
And in fact, our hypothetical Blub
programmer wouldn't use either of
them. Of course he wouldn't program in
machine language. That's what
compilers are for. And as for Cobol,
he doesn't know how anyone can get
anything done with it. It doesn't even
have x (Blub feature of your choice).
As long as our hypothetical Blub
programmer is looking down the power
continuum, he knows he's looking down.
Languages less powerful than Blub are
obviously less powerful, because
they're missing some feature he's used
to. But when our hypothetical Blub
programmer looks in the other
direction, up the power continuum, he
doesn't realize he's looking up. What
he sees are merely weird languages. He
probably considers them about
equivalent in power to Blub, but with
all this other hairy stuff thrown in
as well. Blub is good enough for him,
because he thinks in Blub.
When we switch to the point of view of
a programmer using any of the
languages higher up the power
continuum, however, we find that he in
turn looks down upon Blub. How can you
get anything done in Blub? It doesn't
even have y.
C# 3.0 isn't hard. Sure you can abuse it, but it isn't hard or confusing to any programmer with more than week of C# 3.0 experience. Your boss's skills have just fallen behind and he wants to bring the rest of the team down to his level. DON'T LET HIM!
Continue using anonymous funcs, the var keyword, auto-properties, and what have you to your hearts content. You won't lose your job over it. If he gets pissy about it, laugh it off.
Like it or not, if you plan on using LINQ in any situation, you're going to have to utilize some of the C# 3.0 language specs.
Your boss is going to have to warm up to them if he wants to utilize the feature sets you get from 3.5, which are numerous and worth your time investing in.
Also, from my experience in leading teams, I've found that using the 3.0 specs actually has helped devs readability and understanding of the code base. There's about a weeks worth of time that is spent by the dev trying to understand what the syntax means, but once they get it they much prefer the new way over the old way.
Perhaps you can do a presentation once a week on each feature to everyone and get some of the developers on your side to help convince management of the benefits.
I recently moved from a bleeding edge C# house to a C# house that was running mostly on dot.Net 1.1 and some 2.0 projects, using mostly only 1.1 features. Luckily management stay away from the code. Most of the developers love all the new features in the newer frameworks, they just don't have the time or inclination to figure them out by themselves. Once I managed to show them how they can make their own lives easier they started using them by themselves and we have migrated several projects to gain the new language features and better tool advantages.
Some people are just afraid of change, because maybe you'll make them all look stupid using fancy new technologies. Could also be that your boss doesn't want the team learning new things instead of getting work done the old fasioned way.
The var keyword can certainly be abused, but in most cases reduces redundant code. LINQ is the main thing you want from .Net 3.5 because of the huge time saving in the amount of code you have to write. Your boss should be encouraging you to use it. Also the base class libraries now take delegates are parameters, so you will be limiting yourself a lot by not using them. Lambda's are just some fancy syntactic sugar to make delegates cleaner.
I would refer you to Effectively Integrating into Software Development Teams and Leading by Example. Two really great articles on how to deal with teams that are afraid of change.
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For the next 3 years I will have to work with the JVM (project requirement) using a very specific third party API. They want Java but I've been given leeway to move away from Java. I was hoping we could move back to the .NET framework so I could develop code in F#, being absolutely in love with OCaml. .NET development has been struck down by our customer. It is a no go.
I've turned to looking, reading, and poking around programming blogs/forums trying to understand which language might appeal to me further: Scala or Clojure. Those seem to have the largest community/fan base. Being experienced with ML languages I see lots of people who compare Scala to ML. However, there are some real naysayers when making this comparison. If Scala was that close to ML my productivity and learning curve would benefit making this switch.
The internet is full of misinformation and wonder if I'm suffering from such. I don't like the syntax of Lisp (don't hurt me!) but if Scala has the warts I'm reading (poor IDE support, in flux Unit testing framework, performance issues) I'm wondering if Clojure is the better option. I want to be productive out of the gate, using functions as first class objects, and minimizing concurrency pain.
So anyways, before I spend too much time on the internet and not working... I'm stuck with the JVM, sick of Java and wondering where to go?
In my opinion, both Clojure and Scala don't have great IDE support, if that's really important to you. That said, here's what I can collect from my reading & experience.
Scala's pros
Faster than Clojure thanks to more static typing
Closer to ML (syntax, type-directed programming)
Bigger standard API (Clojure's APIs grow very slowly, because they want to make sure they find the best idioms before making them public. That said, Clojure still has semi-official supplementary APIs)
Better integration practices with the typical Java toolset (Clojure is still making some choices, so less firmly established yet on this regard)
Older than Clojure (but Clojure is built on top of a very old and proven core: Lisp)
People say it has chances to reach mainstream, while they wouldn't say the same about Clojure
Clojure's pros
Incredibly easy, fast and right concurrency thanks to MVCC-based STM and other concurrency mechanisms
Immutability by default helps doing the right thing first
More stable standard API
When things change, usually you don't have to rewrite any existing code
(Scala's collections are being remade again for 2.8)
(I have also read somewhere that it's common knowledge that Scala's Actors implementation needs a rethinking and rewrite.)
Easier to learn (small language, being a (very-clean) Lisp)
An opportunity for you to grow by learning something different
Clojure's performance will only get better with time; there's still room for nice optimizations in the compiler
Scala's tying to Java feels more limiting than Clojure's (interactions between Scala's and Java's static type systems). One could sometimes say the same about Clojure (Object-Orientation's support is not a 1:1 fit, but support for this will soon get better)
Rich Hickey has a gift for making choices that put Clojure in the position of having technical leading features that will be adopted by other languages in the decades to follow. And he also has a gift for explaining them. So use them today in Clojure, or wait to use them in another language in some number of years. :)
On distributed concurrency
If your concurrency needs are distributed, Clojure doesn't yet have anything for this unless you run it on top of Terracotta or something similar, in which case you'll be able to use all its concurrency features. If you do, you will end up with a better distributed concurrency experience than with Scala's Actors, IMO.
Conclusion
IMO Scala tries to do everything, and succeeds at doing most of it. Clojure doesn't try the same thing, but what it focuses on is more than enough and succeeds so well that most people really knowing Clojure wouldn't want to go back to something else. Disclosure: my personal preference goes, of course, to Clojure. I hope I've been able to be objective in what I wrote.
Have you considered Groovy? I don't think it is quite as functional as Scala/Clojure, but it's certainly a lot more functional than Java**. In general, I can get the same work done in Groovy with about 50% of the code it would take me in Java.
This is because Groovy is syntactically similar to Java and provides seamless access to the JDK libraries, but the addition of a lot of language features (closures, meta-programming, properties) and dynamic typing eliminates almost all the boilerplate associated with Java programming.
** I mean functional in the sense of 'functional programming' rather than 'working correctly'
I'll address the points you raised about Scala.
IDE support:
Scala doesn't have the same level or IDE support Java has -- or, for that matter, that F# should have with VS10.
That said, it has one of the best (maybe even the best?) IDE supports on JVM, outside Java. Right now NetBeans is good enough, and people have consistently said IDEA is still better (hearsay). The Eclipse plugin is unstable though.
But you mentioned a 3-years range, and the IDE support for Scala should be greatly enhanced once Scala 2.8 is out, as it will provide some compiler-support for IDEs. There's no release date defined, but it looks to be within the next six months, maybe three. And the Eclipse plugin will be updated right along with it.
In flux unit testing framework:
Yes, if you meant it is vibrant, evolving and well supported, instead of stagnant and abandoned. ScalaTest, Specs and ScalaCheck are top quality frameworks, compatible between themselves, and compatible with other Java frameworks and libraries, such as JUnit and JMock.
The testing frameworks, in fact, are almost a child poster of what is possible with Scala.
EDIT: Scala has basic unit test support in its standard library (scala.testing.SUnit). However, given that many superior, actively-supported and free alternatives have appeared, this has been deprecated and will likely not be part of the library shipped with Scala 2.8.
Performance issues:
I'm unaware of any, aside from the fact that you can write lousy code, just as with any other language. People not used to functional programming will often do stuff that's not efficient, such as not using tail recursion, or concatenating lists, and the paradigm shift that Scala enables brings that to light.
At any rate, you can write Scala code as fast as Java code (even faster with some upcoming features). And you can write Scala code with functional features almost as fast as Java code.
Quite frankly, get another job.
If you are to spend the next three years feeling uncomfortable on what you're doing, you should consider looking for more attractive alternatives.
Even if you manage to get a language you like, if you are part of a team ( which I guess you are ) the rest of the team might not like that language. If the rest of them code in Java and you in "fill in the blank" programming language, then problems may arise.
It is not that bad after all.
Talk with your boss, let him know how do you feel. Start looking for alternatives and have a nice and professional "leave".
There is no reason why you can't still have a good relationship with your current boss. If eventually they have a new project for .net you may come back. Talk about that also with them. Leave your doors open.
Its not really a zero sum game, learn them all!
ps: i vote for Clojure, i find it the most fun!
You should consider yourself lucky that you can use the JVM, because the JVM is becoming more and more popular for alternative programming languages than Java.
Besides Java there's Groovy, Scala, Clojure (a Lisp dialect on the JVM), JRuby (Ruby on the JVM), Jython (Python on the JVM), Jaskell (Haskell on the JVM), Fan (runs on the JVM as well as the .NET CLR) and lots more, and there's also an OCaml-Java, OCaml that runs on the JVM.
So, there's lots of choice in programming languages on the JVM, from purely functional to simple scripting and anvanced OO languages.
Tool support for Scala and Clojure may be immature, but it's steadily improving.
Since you like F#, then Scala is most likely your best bet. I say try it out and form your own opinion - you might find that the things people gripe about are things that don't matter to you, or things you can work around.
Don't forget jRuby, and note that an IDE is optional for non-Java
I think you have a great situation. How many people get permission to choose the implementation language? With everything available for the JVM having your environment chosen is not much of a restriction.
You won't need great IDE support in the less verbose languages
In a language as powerful as Ruby with no type declarations, you don't need an IDE at all
Scala was developed specifically to cure the verbose-java-blues
Count yourself lucky that you have three years of work lined up :-)
Clojure might be fun and provides functional concurrency-safe design patterns
Noop? http://code.google.com/p/noop/ (experimental though)
In terms of IDE support and other doubts you're having, Clojure doesn't do any better than Scala. And for a person with ML/F# background (or generally that in strictly, statically typed FP languages), you'll definitely find Scala much closer to what you're used to.
If you like ML you might like CAL which is more-or-less Haskell 98 for the JVM.
It is high quality and very stable, and has good IDE support on Eclipse, but sadly is no longer under active development.