In the object paradigm, a system consists of objects with mutable state, whereas in the functional paradigm, it consists of functions and immutable values. At first, these two worlds seem incompatible.
But not so for Odersky. In 2004 he released the first version of Scala, a language that combines both.
Scala’s roots are object-oriented, sharing the same basic constructs as Java, with whom it is fully compatible. Its functional flavor comes from several features borrowed or transposed from concepts in functional languages like Haskell. This includes first-class and higher-order functions, including currying, but also pattern matching with case classes, and the support for monads and tail recursions.
The mariage is suprisingly elegant. Maybe the two worlds are compatible after all.
But the ambitions of Scala do not stop here. It also aims at beeing scaleable, both in terms of modularity and in terms of expressivity. Scala should support the modularisation of small and large components, and help reduce the gap between the code and the domain concepts.
The many features of the Scala’s type system enables scalability along both axes. Traits enable for instance a fined grained modularisation of object behaviors. Implicit conversions on the other hand enable existing types in libraries to be extended to express code more clearly.
But more importantly, features of the language create synergies. Abstract type members combined with type nesting enable the cake pattern, a form of dependency injection, or family polymorphism, a way to type check constellation of multiple related classes. The support of call-by-name combined with implicits enable the definition of domain specific languages.
You can’t but be amazed by how features sometimes combine. It is for instance possible to map a collection and convert its type at the same time using the special breakout object. You can even pattern match regular expressions!
Such synergies are possible because the foundations of Scala are principled.
- First, everything is an object. There is no primitive types. Instead, the type hierarchy has two main roots, one for mutable objects (with reference semantics) and one for immutable objects (with value semantics).
- Second, you can abstract over types, values, and functions using parametrization or abstract members. The three constructs support both forms of abstractions consistently.
- Third, any object that defines an apply() function can be used as a function. This closes the gap between functions and objects. The inverse of apply() is unapply(). Any object that defines unapply() can be used as an extractor for pattern matching.
Take the expression “val l = List(1,2,3)”. This is not native syntax for list construction, but actually the evaluation of the function “apply” on the singleton object “List” with the arguments “1,2,3”. Or take the expression “val (x,y) = (1,2)”. This is not native syntax for multiple assignments, but tuple unpacking using extractors. These principles enable nice extensions of the language.
The flexibility of Scala has a price though: it is easy to learn Scala on the surface, but mastering its intricacies is challenging.
Also, Scala comes with many additional features that seem to exist more for convenience than necessity, making it even harder to master. It is for instance questionable wether structural typing or default parameter values, to name a few, should really have made it into the language. Clearly they are usefull and alleviate some pain points of Java, but they also distract from the essence of the language. Scala might at times appear to lack focus.
The richness of the language is acknowledged by the Scala community itself. To quote Odersky, “Scala is a bit of a chameleon. It makes many programming tasks refreshingly easy and at the same time contains some pretty intricate constructs that allow experts to design truly advanced typesafe libraries.”
Scala is a language with many very powerful features and with many ways to do things. It’s up to the developers to use the features well and enforce a consistent programming style. For corporations, these two aspects could be a barrier to adoption. In comparison, a language like Kotlin offers the same basic ingredients but is a lot more simple.
The long bet of Odersky seems to pay off though. Scala has found its audience and made its way to the industry, including top players like Twitter or LinkedIn. It has established itself as a viable alternative.
Scala is a source of innovation and inspiration. While functions were already in object-oriented languages like Smalltalk in the 80s, Scala showed that object-orientation doesn’t mean mutability. The resulting programming style “OO in the large, FP in the small” is gaining traction. Having shown that the combination works, other languages will certainly follow this path.
Ten years after its inception, Scala has a mature and vivid community of users. To gain further adoption, it must now consolidate its foundation and keep it stable across releases. Fortunately, we can still count on Odersky to continue to innovate at the same time. At the recent ScalaDays 2015, he unveiled his plan to better control mutations of state, not with monads, but implicit conversions. That is yet another ambitious challenge.
