The other day I noticed that IntelliJ had issued an updated Scala plugin. Unfortunately it works in Idea 8 only (with a good justification) so I had to install its beta as well. The good news is that it was worth it. I remember the original plugin which did not qualify even as a toy. This time they made real progress.
On the positive side now there is decent syntax highlighting, Ctrl-click navigation and other basic Idea facilities actually working. Clearly there is a lot of space for improvement from better code correctness checks to Scala javadoc support in Ctrl-Q but at least now it is possible to play with the language in a meaningful way.
This year I have seen so many blogs telling about Java decline and the rise of dynamic and/or functional languages that I decided it's time to extend my horizons. I decided to look at Scala (as a "better C++ than Java") and Erlang (because of its telco roots and the availability of a very good book). So far I have been struggling mightily with weird syntax of functional languages.
What I really find puzzling is that despite all the buzz about superiority of dynamic/functional languages I have not seen a single book on design with them. The standard OOA&D cannot be completely applicable (e.g. there are no classes in Erlang and no interfaces in a typical dynamic language) and even UML is likely to be more convenient for pure OO. Taking into account how long and hard it was for most people to master true OOP I am surprised with the lack of such discussions.
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