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F# vs Scala: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will explore the key differences between F# and Scala, two popular programming languages that are widely used for functional programming. Both F# and Scala are statically-typed languages that support functional programming paradigms along with object-oriented features. However, there are some significant differences between the two languages that set them apart. Let's dive into the details.
- Type Inference:
F# is known for its powerful type inference system. It can infer the types of expressions, variables, and function return values without explicit type annotations in most cases. On the other hand, while Scala also supports type inference, it requires more explicit type annotations compared to F#. This difference in type inference approach makes F# code more concise and helps reduce verbosity.
- Syntax and Expressiveness:
Scala has a more complex syntax compared to F#. Scala gives developers a lot of flexibility and expressiveness by allowing both object-oriented and functional constructs, which can lead to more expressive and concise code in some cases. On the other hand, F# has a simpler and more streamlined syntax with less ceremony, making it easier to learn and read, especially for beginners. The simpler syntax of F# promotes code readability and maintainability.
- Pattern Matching:
Pattern matching is a powerful feature that allows developers to deconstruct data structures and write concise and elegant code. Both F# and Scala support pattern matching, but F# has more advanced pattern matching capabilities compared to Scala. F# provides active patterns, which enable developers to define their own patterns and provide custom matching logic. This feature makes F# code more expressive and flexible when working with complex data structures.
- Concurrency and Parallelism:
Scala has built-in support for actor-based concurrency through the Akka framework, which allows developers to easily write concurrent and distributed systems. F#, on the other hand, provides lightweight asynchronous programming primitives and the MailboxProcessor
type for managing concurrency. F# emphasizes asynchronous programming for handling concurrency, making it easier to reason about parallel and asynchronous code.
- Interoperability:
Scala is built on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and seamlessly integrates with existing Java code, libraries, and frameworks. This makes Scala a good choice for projects that require interoperability with Java. F#, on the other hand, is built on the .NET platform and has tight integration with the .NET ecosystem, including libraries and frameworks written in C# and other .NET languages. This allows F# developers to leverage the existing .NET ecosystem while developing applications.
- Tooling and Community:
Scala has a larger community and a wide range of third-party libraries and frameworks available, thanks to its popularity and long-standing presence. The Scala ecosystem has matured over time and offers robust tooling support with integrated development environments (IDEs) like IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. F# has a smaller community compared to Scala, but it has a growing and passionate community. The F# tooling has improved significantly over the years, with support from popular IDEs like Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider.
In Summary, F# and Scala differ in their type inference capabilities, syntax and expressiveness, pattern matching features, concurrency models, interoperability options, and the size of their communities. These differences make each language suitable for different use cases and developer preferences.
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
Clojure is a Lisp dialect, so if you like Lisp that's probably the way to go. Scala is more popular and broadly used, and has a larger job market especially for data engineering. Both are functional but Scala is more interoperable with Java libraries, probably a big factor in its popularity. I prefer Scala for a number of reasons, but in terms of jobs Scala is the clear leader.
Scala has more momentum. It is good for back-end programming. The popular big data framework Spark is written in Scala. Spark is a marketable skill.
If you need to program something very dynamic like old school A.I., Clojure is attractive. You would chose Scala if prefer a statically typed language, and Clojure if you prefer a dynamically typed language.
It's not clear exactly what you mean by "high money", you mean financial support to the language, money paid for a job, economic health of the market the language is positioned on?
In any case, it's very hard to give any advice here, since you'd need to provide details on the intended usage, what sector, kind of product/service, team size, potential customer type... Both languages are very general purpose and decently supported, each have its own pros and cons, both are functional as approach, and neither is really mainstream.
Hi there. I want to expand my coding toolset. So I want to learn a second backend language besides Kotlin. Kotlin is fantastic. I love it in every aspect, and I think I can never return to Java. And also why should I? It is 100% interoperable with java and can co-exist in every project.
So my question here is. Which language do you think will bring me more joy? I think F#; it is more like Kotlin. Then C# (it's more or like 100% java). But, let's say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin? can they live side by side? Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow? I would like to learn .Net.
If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go?
Exceptional decision to go with Kotlin. For the other story, go full with C#. "is C# the holy cow? Yes it is.". Specially now when netCore is crossplatform and you can build asp.net core applications on Windows, Linux and macOS via Visual Studio Code which is also multiplatform. Nothing will beat C# in the near future. Also, at the end of 2021 Microsoft will release Net 6.0 which will include MAUI.
"For those new to .NET MAUI (standing for .NET Multi-platform App UI), Microsoft says it's "the evolution of Xamarin.Forms extended from mobile to desktop scenarios with UI controls rebuilt from the ground up for performance and extensibility."
So, C# all the way sire!
animefanx1,
First let's get your questions sorted: Which language do you think will bring me more joy?
This you will have to decide for yourself, I am a long time C# developer and have seen it grow into a very compelling platform. The language and I'd compare it more to Kotlin than Java (by a long margin). More on .NET in a bit.
say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin?
You can have 100% interop with a caveat, your F# libraries have to implement certain guidance in order to be referenced from C#. Some (dare I say most) of the differences between F# and C# are predicated on language constructs that are not available in C#. For instance F# functions that return Unit.
can they live side by side?
Yes.
Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow?
I don't know if I take your meaning, but let me say this: Learning either C# or F# will likely force you to understand concepts such as garbage collection, primitive types, etc. which apply to all .NET languages, thus a lot of the effort you put into .NET is bound to pay off regardless of your choice.
If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go? You can't go wrong with any of these and I venture to say whether you select C#, F#, Dart or Go as your next adventure, your willingness to learn will take you to try other languages, some which mey not even exist yet!
PS1: .NET is an end to end environment now. With the introduction of Blazor and Razor pages one does not need JavaScript or other browser scripting languages, it even interops with JavaScript. PS2. Microsoft is working on unifying .NET. Soon there will be only one version: .NET 5! Caveat: Some features such as WinForms will still be specific to the windows environment but all of those are likely things you don't need in Mac or Linux
I think you can learn go instead C#. C# is cool, but Golang also cool. It can run on any OS without specific software. C# can run on linux too but it's only the .NET Core as I know. But golang is flexible. So try it and decide what do you think about Golang
Finding the best server-side tool for building a personal information organizer that focuses on performance, simplicity, and scalability.
performance and scalability get a prototype going fast by keeping codebase simple find hosting that is affordable and scales well (Java/Scala-based ones might not be affordable)
I've picked Node.js here but honestly it's a toss up between that and Go around this. It really depends on your background and skillset around "get something going fast" for one of these languages. Based on not knowing that I've suggested Node because it can be easier to prototype quickly and built right is performant enough. The scaffolding provided around Node.js services (Koa, Restify, NestJS) means you can get up and running pretty easily. It's important to note that the tooling surrounding this is good also, such as tracing, metrics et al (important when you're building production ready services).
You'll get more scalability and perf from go, but balancing them out I would say that you'll get pretty far with a well built Node.JS service (our entire site with over 1.5k requests/m scales easily and holds it's own with 4 pods in production.
Without knowing the scale you are building for and the systems you are using around it it's hard to say for certain this is the right route.
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.
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.
We needed to incorporate Big Data Framework for data stream analysis, specifically Apache Spark / Apache Storm. The three options of languages were most suitable for the job - Python, Java, Scala.
The winner was Python for the top of the class, high-performance data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas) written in C, quick learning curve, quick prototyping allowance, and a great connection with other future tools for machine learning as Tensorflow.
The whole code was shorter & more readable which made it easier to develop and maintain.
Pros of F#
- Pattern-matching53
- Makes programming fun again42
- Type providers38
- Delightful32
- Frictionless30
- Static type inference26
- Composable21
- Ml syntax19
- REPL17
- Succinct17
- DDD10
- Making invalid states impossible9
- Great community7
- WebSharper7
- Language support for units of measure7
- Functional Programming6
- Powerful6
- Beautiful Code5
- Compact5
- Multiplatform5
- Functional paradigm5
- Computation Expressions5
- Open source5
- Less bugs5
- Productive5
- Allow use JS and .NET libraries4
- Object oriented features4
- Fun to write4
Pros of Scala
- Static typing188
- Pattern-matching178
- Jvm175
- Scala is fun172
- Types138
- Concurrency95
- Actor library88
- Solve functional problems86
- Open source81
- Solve concurrency in a safer way80
- Functional44
- Fast24
- Generics23
- It makes me a better engineer18
- Syntactic sugar17
- Scalable13
- First-class functions10
- Type safety10
- Interactive REPL9
- Expressive8
- SBT7
- Case classes6
- Implicit parameters6
- Rapid and Safe Development using Functional Programming4
- JVM, OOP and Functional programming, and static typing4
- Object-oriented4
- Used by Twitter4
- Functional Proframming3
- Spark2
- Beautiful Code2
- Safety2
- Growing Community2
- DSL1
- Rich Static Types System and great Concurrency support1
- Naturally enforce high code quality1
- Akka Streams1
- Akka1
- Reactive Streams1
- Easy embedded DSLs1
- Mill build tool1
- Freedom to choose the right tools for a job0
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Cons of F#
- Microsoft tend to ignore F# preferring to hype C#3
- Interop between C# can sometimes be difficult2
- Hype1
- Type Providers can be unstable in larger solutions1
Cons of Scala
- Slow compilation time11
- Multiple ropes and styles to hang your self7
- Too few developers available6
- Complicated subtyping4
- My coworkers using scala are racist against other stuff2