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  1. Stackups
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  5. Objective-C vs Scala

Objective-C vs Scala

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Objective-C
Objective-C
Stacks13.3K
Followers6.5K
Votes490
Scala
Scala
Stacks11.9K
Followers7.8K
Votes1.5K
GitHub Stars14.4K
Forks3.1K

Objective-C vs Scala: What are the differences?

Developers describe Objective-C as "The primary programming language you use when writing software for OS X and iOS". Objective-C is a superset of the C programming language and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime. Objective-C inherits the syntax, primitive types, and flow control statements of C and adds syntax for defining classes and methods. It also adds language-level support for object graph management and object literals while providing dynamic typing and binding, deferring many responsibilities until runtime. On the other hand, Scala is detailed as "A pure-bred object-oriented language that runs on the JVM". Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Objective-C and Scala belong to "Languages" category of the tech stack.

"Ios", "Xcode" and "Backed by apple" are the key factors why developers consider Objective-C; whereas "Static typing", "Jvm" and "Pattern-matching" are the primary reasons why Scala is favored.

Scala is an open source tool with 11.8K GitHub stars and 2.75K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Scala's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Objective-C has a broader approval, being mentioned in 851 company stacks & 363 developers stacks; compared to Scala, which is listed in 437 company stacks and 324 developer stacks.

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Advice on Objective-C, Scala

Nicholas
Nicholas

Jan 29, 2021

Decided

I am working in the domain of big data and machine learning. I am helping companies with bringing their machine learning models to the production. In many projects there is a tendency to port Python, PySpark code to Scala and Scala Spark.

This yields to longer time to market and a lot of mistakes due to necessity to understand and re-write the code. Also many libraries/apis that data scientists/machine learning practitioners use are not available in jvm ecosystem.

Simply, refactoring (if necessary) and organising the code of the data scientists by following best practices of software development is less error prone and faster comparing to re-write in Scala.

Pipeline orchestration tools such as Luigi/Airflow is python native and fits well to this picture.

I have heard some arguments against Python such as, it is slow, or it is hard to maintain due to its dynamically typed language. However cost/benefit of time consumed porting python code to java/scala alone would be enough as a counter-argument. ML pipelines rarerly contains a lot of code (if that is not the case, such as complex domain and significant amount of code, then scala would be a better fit).

In terms of performance, I did not see any issues with Python. It is not the fastest runtime around but ML applications are rarely time-critical (majority of them is batch based).

I still prefer Scala for developing APIs and for applications where the domain contains complex logic.

198k views198k
Comments
Frank
Frank

CTO at Visionary AG

Aug 25, 2022

Decided

We're moving from Java to Kotlin with our Microservice Stack (Spring Boot) because it is excellently supported by framework and tools and the learning curve is not very steep Kotlin is way more straightforward and convenient to use while providing less boilerplate and more strictness, which finally leads to better code, which is more readable, maintainable and less error-prone. We especially like Kotlin's (functional) data structures, which are, e.g. compared to Scala, easier to understand and don't require deep knowledge in functional programming.

48.8k views48.8k
Comments
Prakhar
Prakhar

Feb 7, 2022

Needs adviceonJavaJavaJavaScriptJavaScriptKotlinKotlin

Basically, I am looking for a good language that compiles to Java and JavaScript(and can use their libraries/frameworks). These JVM languages seem good to me, but I have no interest in Android. Which programming language is the best of these? I am looking for one with high money and something functional.

Edit: Kotlin was originally on this list but I removed it since I had no interest in Android

47.9k views47.9k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Objective-C
Objective-C
Scala
Scala

Objective-C is a superset of the C programming language and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime. Objective-C inherits the syntax, primitive types, and flow control statements of C and adds syntax for defining classes and methods. It also adds language-level support for object graph management and object literals while providing dynamic typing and binding, deferring many responsibilities until runtime.

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
14.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.1K
Stacks
13.3K
Stacks
11.9K
Followers
6.5K
Followers
7.8K
Votes
490
Votes
1.5K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 212
    Ios
  • 115
    Xcode
  • 62
    Backed by apple
  • 47
    Osx
  • 40
    Interface builder
Cons
  • 1
    UNREADABLE
Pros
  • 188
    Static typing
  • 178
    Pattern-matching
  • 175
    Jvm
  • 172
    Scala is fun
  • 138
    Types
Cons
  • 11
    Slow compilation time
  • 7
    Multiple ropes and styles to hang your self
  • 6
    Too few developers available
  • 4
    Complicated subtyping
  • 2
    My coworkers using scala are racist against other stuff
Integrations
No integrations available
Java
Java

What are some alternatives to Objective-C, Scala?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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