[rules-dev] Scala

[Mark Proctor]

Chun, Byung C wrote:
> I'm only an observer to this list, although greatly impressed by what you guys have accomplished, outstanding to be honest. Just a quick question though, have you looked at Groovy? Not to get into religious language wars, but you might get the same compactness and literate style with perhaps more fluid integration w Java code.
>   
Groovy isn't a statically typed language, which imho doesn't make it 
suitable for large complex projects. It was partly for that reason, and 
performance both runtime and compilation time, that we went with MVEL 
for the default consequence language over groovy.
> Jin 
> Mobile: 857-222-7518
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: rules-dev-bounces at lists.jboss.org <rules-dev-bounces at lists.jboss.org>
> To: Rules Dev List <rules-dev at lists.jboss.org>
> Sent: Sun Jan 11 19:12:45 2009
> Subject: [rules-dev] Scala
>
> Hey All. I have been looking into scala for sometime, and recently
> started using it for a testing tool (kind of a replacement for the
> "fit for rules" library).
> I have been quite impressed with it, the tool integration (with
> intelliJ) is outstanding, and it works nice with maven (even with
> mixed java source).
>
> Assuming this goes well, I am thinking of extending the usage of scala
> to the server side components of bits of guvnor (obviously the client
> is still GWT). Probably in a small way at first (I have found that
> common annoying bits of code in java can be much clearer in scala -
> examples to come !).
>
> I was interested in what people think about this? Does it make it
> harder for people to get into the code (I am not aiming to write the
> densest scala, just use it when approriate)?
>
> The main downsides I see are: Eclipse support - the plugin for eclipse
> for scala is not great at the moment (netbeans or intelliJ would be
> better), and general familiarity for people to read (although I
> personally think it would take anyone who reads this list minutes to
> learn enough to follow the simple things I would do).
>
> Thoughts? Objections?
>
> FAQ: Why scala? well its closer to java in intent then all other
> popular JVM languages (ie its static) and compiles down similarly to
> result in similar performance (better in some cases). I use "closures"
> a lot (thanks to GWT that got be in the habit) but the inner class way
> of doing it in java gets combersome.
>
>