I wrote a post some time ago introducing a software transactional memory (STM) framework for Scala based on implicit conversions. This framework had some nice features, like a very clean syntax coupled with compile-time verification of transactional semantics, but it really wasn’t ready for real-world use. There was one very serious skeleton in the closet [...]
I know, the title seems a bit…bizarre. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Scala, I think of many of the same uses to which I apply Java. Scala is firmly entrenched in my mind as a static, mid-level language highly applicable to things like large-scale applications and non-trivial architectures, but [...]
In one of Rich Hickey’s excellent presentations introducing Clojure, he mentions in passing that Scala “isn’t really a functional language”. He says that Java and Scala are both cut from the same mold, and because Scala doesn’t force immutability it really shouldn’t qualify. These viewpoint is something I’ve been hearing a lot of from various [...]
This is a post I have been meaning to write for quite some time. Despite being an officially excommunicated former-member of the Ruby community, I still like to keep up on the latest developments. A few months ago, my Ruby Inside feed produced an interesting post introducing a new library by Peter Cooper (the author [...]
The fact is that there are a lot of problems that are hard to solve in a purely-functional style. That’s not to say that no solution exists, but certain problems are very difficult to model without shared state. In such situations, a slightly different approach to concurrency must be considered. Actors are inapplicable, seeing as [...]