Scala lift off

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The first Scala lift off unconference was held in San Francisco on May 10, 2008. It was facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin. Please add any notes and materials that you have from the unconference.

Contents

Keynote: Martin Odersky

The keynote address, "A Scalable Language" was given by Prof. Martin Odersky. Alex Payne liveblogged the keynote.

JavaRebel

Jevgeni Kabanov of ZeroTurnAround, the makers of JavaRebel and platinum sponsors of Scala lift off, offered a free license of JavaRebel to all unconference attendees. He also announced a Scala-only version of JavaRebel, to be free for at least one year and to be included with the lift distribution. JavaRebel is a JVM plugin that reloads changes to Java .class files on-the-fly, bringing "dynamic programming" to Scala. There are instructions on using JavaRebel with lift.

Sessions

The group broke out into sessions. The following is a partial list (in no particular order) of sessions that were held, please add any that are missing, and rearrange as convenient.

Wrap-up

From Experiment to Experience

Martin gave an inspiring closing speech. He mentioned that two years ago he gave a talk on the "Scala Experiment", and a year ago he gave a talk on the "Scala Experience". There followed an interesting discussion:

  • Cool screencasts for Ruby and Python, opportunity for Scala screencasts
  • Promote and market Scala on its own merits, not just as an extension to Java. Other communities (Ruby, Python) look down on Java and associating Scala with Java too much may be a black mark.
  • Can we market the .Net platform in addition to Java?
    • Martin on status of .Net: Starting to seriously revive that. It basically works, but he wouldn't advise writing anything big in it. Resources from Microsoft would help a lot to move it forward.
    • Libraries in native Scala? Martin: There are compromises. Some things translate transparently (AnyRef). Some things are different (Throwable) and translate through predefs. A minimal core library works on both sides. Some things (JCL collections) are necessarily Java-specific.
  • Some Java developers (who want Java to change) will go crazy (happy) if they know that some things (e.g. closures) are already in Scala and work on the JVM
  • Why would programmers want to adopt this language?
    • Adopting it solves the multi-core crisis
    • Why would other people care?
    • Come up with a top list of what people are using and address the pain-points (Ruby is slow, Python is not so slow but transitioning, Java ...)
    • Address each community and have a marketing campaign for each different audience
  • Martin: Make great stuff and let others know you're doing great stuff
  • Paul Snively, editor at LtU: Greatest thing I heard today is "What is covariance and contravariance?" Great that industry is encountering concepts that have been around for a long time.
  • What causes a shift for managers and in industry is vendors (e.g. JavaRebel) supporting Scala and people with marketing departments.
  • Rails did a great job of showing how easy it is to make database-backed websites and a time when there was a shift to user-generated content. Now there is a shift to cloud-computing (everyone at Startup School was using EC2 and S3). A great opportunity to make Scala/lift available for cloud computing.
  • A naive Java to Scala translator to help transition.
  • Rails got attention to some extent by DHH being intentionally provocative, and he was heard.
    • DPP: So am I supposed to stand up and say "Fuck DHH?"
  • Rails made money off of consultancy. How do we take an academic language and introduce it to industry?
  • Two people in the room sold Java to Wall St. Now there is a clear need but it's not top-down "the CIO says we need a website". It's bottom-up, sneaking-in-through-the-backdoor.
  • Martin: Ted Neward will do Scala training classes. There is already a lot of demand for it. We need to put together convincing examples and share them with each other.
  • We're looking for "one event" or "one thing" like Rails. Even a year ago you Googled Scala and it wasn't even the first hit. You don't start with the icon or the killer app, you start with baby steps.
  • On top-down pressure: The pressure now on the web is collaborative stuff and Comet, where lift is very strong. If there were good screencasts on building collaborative spreadsheets in 20 minutes.
  • One thing to look out for in marketing: Don't make Scala and lift be all things to all people. It may take a while for one or two things that Scala and lift excel at to become clear.

One Thing

At the very end, everyone in the group mentioned one thing they were going to do after leaving the conference.

  • Write more code.
  • Two things: Adopt lift at livejournal for experimental projects. Take care of the packaging for Scala in Debian.
  • Write some code.
  • Blog about it and give a lecture at JUG.
  • Finish one of the five lift web apps.
  • Upload my presentation and write a blog post explaining co/contravariance.
  • Spend more time on Scala project at work.
  • Spearhead the creation of "lift in a box".
  • Lift on EC2
  • Post on the list about managing community contributed libraries.
  • Talk to DPP about screencast. Talk to Martin about logos.
  • Add a feature to Buy-A-Feature.
  • Make JSR223 engine loadable
  • Write lots of code.
  • Looking to do something MINA-like
  • Buy the Scala book.
  • Plug Scala at my company.
  • Finish my article for Bill.
  • Write to Coders & Krugle and plug Scala.
  • Read the Scala book and promote it at my comapny
  • Finish reading the Scala book.
  • Finish a couple of projects in lift
  • Introduce Scala to Boston
  • Put out tutorials to make an apartment hunting site
  • Raise the Scala profile in Australia
  • Check in some Scala lift code
  • Work on software transactional memory
  • Learn, read
  • Continue to brainwash all my friends
  • Do some coding in Scala
  • Get a NetBeans plugin for Scala
  • Spread the word in the Brazilian Scala community
  • Hire more developers interested in Scala
  • OSGi in Scala
  • Join the mailing list and hire more developers
  • Start prototyping next week
  • Learn more about Scala
  • Get the Scala plugin for IntelliJ
  • Scala JavaRebel version to develop
  • Start the SIP process for community involvement. Everyone is invited to join.
  • Teach colleagues about language theory
  • Tell my buddy who wanted to be here
  • Spend time with James and Lex

Other

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