Overview

Scala

Stacks11.9K

Followers7.8K

Votes1.5K

GitHub Stars14.4K

Forks3.1K

Visual Basic

Stacks569

Followers514

Votes8

Scala vs Visual Basic: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Scala and Visual Basic are two programming languages that have significant differences in terms of syntax, use cases, and features. In this markdown code, we will highlight the key differences between Scala and Visual Basic.

1. Scala: Object-oriented and functional programming combined

Scala is a programming language that seamlessly blends object-oriented and functional programming paradigms. It provides great interoperability with Java, making it a popular choice for developers who want to leverage existing Java libraries. Scala's strong type system and rich functional programming features allow developers to write concise and expressive code.

2. Visual Basic: Designed for RAD

Visual Basic is a programming language that was specifically designed for rapid application development (RAD). It provides a simple syntax that allows developers to create Windows-based applications quickly. Visual Basic has a visual development environment that enables drag-and-drop functionality, making it ideal for creating user interfaces without extensive coding.

3. Scala: Strong type system and type inference

Scala has a strong static type system, which ensures type safety at compile-time and helps catch errors early in the development process. Additionally, Scala has powerful type inference capabilities, allowing developers to omit explicit type annotations when the type can be inferred from the context. This reduces boilerplate code and makes Scala code more concise.

4. Visual Basic: Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Visual Basic is closely integrated with its development environment, the Visual Basic IDE. This IDE offers a rich set of tools and features that facilitate the development of Windows-based applications. The IDE includes a form designer, code editor, debugger, and other helpful tools that enable developers to create, test, and debug applications efficiently.

5. Scala: Immutable by default

In Scala, immutability is the default for variables and data structures. This promotes functional programming principles and helps in writing thread-safe code. Scala encourages the use of immutable data structures, which can enhance readability, reduce bugs related to shared state, and make code easier to reason about.

6. Visual Basic: Event-driven programming

Visual Basic is primarily used for event-driven programming, where actions and behavior are driven by user interactions or system events. The language provides built-in support for event handling and allows developers to define event handlers that respond to various user or system events. This makes Visual Basic suitable for creating interactive and responsive applications.

**In Summary, Scala combines object-oriented and functional programming paradigms, has a strong type system and type inference, and promotes immutability. On the other hand, Visual Basic is designed for rapid application development with its integrated development environment (IDE) and is well-suited for event-driven programming.

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Advice on Scala, Visual Basic

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

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

Feb 7, 2022

Needs adviceon

Java

JavaScript

Kotlin

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

Scala	Visual Basic
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.	Visual Basic is derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 14.4K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 3.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 11.9K	Stacks 569
Followers 7.8K	Followers 514
Votes 1.5K	Votes 8
Pros & Cons
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	Pros 5 ALGOL-like syntax makes code more readable 3 XML Literals Cons 4 Specific to the microsoft platform
Integrations
Java	.NET

What are some alternatives to Scala, Visual Basic?

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 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

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

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 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

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 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# (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 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

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.