How I failed to convince another programmer that Scala is good - too many problems getting started

On 17/11/2011 07:21, Andreas Flierl wrote:
> Hi,
> [...]
> I find it interesting that the situation for me was just the other way round.
> Eclipse ran (and runs) fairly stable (in contrast to what others reported I
> never had to do excessive restarts e.g.) whereas I found IDEA (almost) unusable.
> My (personal and subjective) key points are: incremental build in the
> background, correct error highlighting in the editor, a (sortable and
> filterable) list of compile errors and warnings (and a clear distinction between
> those) from which I can navigate to the source file, correct "rename" and "move"
> refactorings (at least) project-wide, standard OS shortcuts for window
> handling.
>
> Whereas sophisticated semantic highlighting and an outline only help me very
> little.
>
> The Eclipse plug-in had its fair share of problems, especially in the "correct
> error highlighting" and "rename/move refactoring" parts, but was (each time I
> compared) considerably better than what I saw in IDEA, and it keeps improving
> constantly.

Thank you Andreas, I was starting to think that I was the only one for
who IDEA was just not usable *at all*.

Cheers,

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Chris Marshall <oxbow_lakes@hotmail.com> wrote:

Yes, I am serious. If you have a product which doesn't work, your customer uses it, doesn't like it, walks away and uses a competitor instead, not telling you about the fault then who has the problem? You or your customer?
It's difficult enough to get internal customers of software *which is being built specifically for them* to report bugs. I cannot imagine how many bugs go unreported in software in general. 
It's quite clear that you are in a minority - this thread is full of people who said "I used X, found it rubbish and walked away" whether X was Eclipse or IDEA. None of them have mentioned filing bug reports.

This thread has strayed a lot, and my message was misunderstood. When I mentioned tickets, it was in passing. What I needed to know was how up to date Daniel's evaluation was. It turns out it described reality from one year ago. That was important, since other people might take it for the current status. 
The rest of the discussion is interesting in its own right, and while I personally agree with Viktor and Matthew's opinions, I feel for Chris' take as well. 
In the end, whether we work for Typesafe or not, everyone on this list wants Scala to improve. There's no competition between Eclipse and IntelliJ (not in the sense that we want to get their user base). I'm personally very happy when users go for Scala, either Idea or Eclipse, or emacs. I used all of them for more than two years each (emacs more like 6 or 7). And yes, I (and everyone else contributing to the Eclipse IDE) want to build the best IDE for Scala -- but that's just because we love what we do.
cheers,iulian

 

Chris

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:05:45 +0100
Subject: Re: [scala-user] How I failed to convince another programmer that Scala is good - too many problems getting started
From: viktor.klang@gmail.com
To: oxbow_lakes@hotmail.com
CC: scala-user@googlegroups.com



On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Chris Marshall <oxbow_lakes@hotmail.com> wrote:

+1
The only people whose "job" it is to carefully compile a list of everything that is wrong with the scala Eclipse plugin are those who are being paid to make it a better product.

Umm, are you serious? If people do not report problems, the people who are paid to fix it cannot fix it (simply because they are not psychic). If you don't open a ticket, you're a part of the problem, not the solution.
 

I never really understood this obsession with eating your own dogfood. It's important, of course, but sometimes you need to eat other people's dogfood, so that you can find out what yours is up against.
Chris

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:26:35 -0800
From: ykkenmcd@gmail.com

I'm sorry to sound so harsh, but the simple truth is that Scala/Eclipse in that past has been truly unusable...from freezes almost immediately on entry to completely improper error highlighting to infinite loops. As far as I'm concerned, you need to earn my trust (and time) back, not the other way 'round.

Ken 

--
Viktor Klang

Akka Tech LeadTypesafe - Enterprise-Grade Scala from the Experts

Twitter: @viktorklang

--
« Je déteste la montagne, ça cache le paysage »
Alphonse Allais

> > Specify the version, as well as the plug-in you wish to use. Then, it
> > doesn't auto-update.
>
> This is the behavior I want, which is why I don't use Maven/sbt at all.

See the way your system auto-updates software? Windows, Apple, Linux?

If you don't want it to update, you have to tell it so.

Maven, if you want to run versions of plug-ins from 6 months ago, you
must tell it so.

I feel a little strange, I must confess, acting as Maven/Eclipse
apologist as I've found both to be rather a PITA to work with in the
past.

I just happen to find them the 'least bad option (TM)'.

Regards,

Bryan Hunt

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Chris Marshall <oxbow_lakes@hotmail.com> wrote:

It's quite clear that you are in a minority - this thread is full of people who said "I used X, found it rubbish and walked away" whether X was Eclipse or IDEA. None of them have mentioned filing bug reports.

Thankfully there are enough people in the alleged minority that care about filings bugs. Scala would not be what it is today without them.
Best, Ismael

 If I were to use anything, *ANYTHING* for the first time, be it an IDE, a library, a piece of software or whatever, and all they had were release candidates and beta versions, I would simply walk away. 

I disagree strongly. I would not _rely_ on such a piece of software, but the benefits of learning and writing software to even a beta API can be substantial. For example, something I am doing right now would benefit greatly for JavaFX (for the Mac). If I found that JavaFX worked, at the cost of even 5-6 crashes/day, it would still be a net win for me.
Absolute statements are always dubious.
Ken 

It's quite clear that you are in a minority - this thread is full of people who said "I used X, found it rubbish and walked away" whether X was Eclipse or IDEA. None of them have mentioned filing bug reports.

To follow up on this--these forums _are_ a way of providing feedback.
As for not filing bug reports--sometimes a product is so awful that you don't even know where to begin trying to identify what might be a "real" problem, i.e. one that the originators aren't aware of and the solution of which would actually make the product significantly more useable. That was my experience with Scala/Eclipse (a while back). It was broken at so many points that the only useful feedback I could have provided was, "this is freakin' garbage". Not something you can put into a bug report.
I understand and hope things are better now.
Cheers,Ken