Java vs Scala

Overview

Java

Stacks148.0K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

Scala

Stacks11.9K

Followers7.8K

Votes1.5K

GitHub Stars14.4K

Forks3.1K

Java vs Scala: What are the differences?

Java is a widely used programming language known for its simplicity, scalability, and extensive libraries. Scala, on the other hand, is a modern and powerful language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and provides advanced features such as functional programming, immutability, and concise syntax. Here are the key differences between Java and Scala:

Object-Oriented vs. Functional Programming: Java is primarily an object-oriented programming (OOP) language, while Scala is a hybrid language that combines object-oriented and functional programming (FP) concepts. Java follows a strict OOP paradigm with classes, objects, and inheritance, while Scala provides powerful functional programming features such as immutable data, higher-order functions, and pattern matching.
Conciseness and Expressiveness: Scala is often considered more expressive and concise compared to Java. It provides more advanced language features like type inference, implicit conversions, and higher-order functions, which allow developers to write code in a more concise and expressive manner. Java, being a simpler language, may require more explicit and verbose code.
Interoperability: Java has strong interoperability with other programming languages and platforms due to its widespread usage and mature ecosystem. It can seamlessly integrate with existing Java libraries, frameworks, and tools. Scala, on the other hand, runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and can directly use Java libraries. This means Scala can leverage the vast Java ecosystem, enabling developers to reuse Java code and libraries.
Concurrency and Parallelism: Scala provides better support for concurrent and parallel programming compared to Java. It offers features like actors, futures, and parallel collections that make it easier to write concurrent and parallel code. While Java has its own concurrency utilities and libraries, Scala's functional programming features provide more convenient abstractions for concurrent and parallel programming.
Learning Curve: Java has a simpler syntax and a more gradual learning curve, making it easier for beginners to grasp the basics of programming. Scala, with its hybrid nature and advanced language features, has a steeper learning curve, especially for developers who are new to functional programming concepts.

In summary, Java is widely adopted and has a mature ecosystem, making it suitable for enterprise applications, Android development, and server-side development. Scala, with its functional programming capabilities, is well-suited for applications requiring high concurrency, parallelism, and expressiveness, such as data processing, distributed systems, and scalable web applications.

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Advice on Java, Scala

Erik

Chief Architect at LiveTiles

May 18, 2020

Decided

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

614k views614k

Comments

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Java	Scala
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!	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 148.0K	Stacks 11.9K
Followers 105.5K	Followers 7.8K
Votes 3.7K	Votes 1.5K
Pros & Cons
Pros 608 Great libraries 446 Widely used 401 Excellent tooling 396 Huge amount of documentation available 334 Large pool of developers available Cons 33 Verbosity 27 NullpointerException 17 Nightmare to Write 16 Overcomplexity is praised in community culture 12 Boiler plate code	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
Spring	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Java, Scala?

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.

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.

Rust

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

Related Comparisons

Object-Oriented vs. Functional Programming: Java is primarily an object-oriented programming (OOP) language, while Scala is a hybrid language that combines object-oriented and functional programming (FP) concepts. Java follows a strict OOP paradigm with classes, objects, and inheritance, while Scala provides powerful functional programming features such as immutable data, higher-order functions, and pattern matching.
Conciseness and Expressiveness: Scala is often considered more expressive and concise compared to Java. It provides more advanced language features like type inference, implicit conversions, and higher-order functions, which allow developers to write code in a more concise and expressive manner. Java, being a simpler language, may require more explicit and verbose code.
Interoperability: Java has strong interoperability with other programming languages and platforms due to its widespread usage and mature ecosystem. It can seamlessly integrate with existing Java libraries, frameworks, and tools. Scala, on the other hand, runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and can directly use Java libraries. This means Scala can leverage the vast Java ecosystem, enabling developers to reuse Java code and libraries.
Concurrency and Parallelism: Scala provides better support for concurrent and parallel programming compared to Java. It offers features like actors, futures, and parallel collections that make it easier to write concurrent and parallel code. While Java has its own concurrency utilities and libraries, Scala's functional programming features provide more convenient abstractions for concurrent and parallel programming.
Learning Curve: Java has a simpler syntax and a more gradual learning curve, making it easier for beginners to grasp the basics of programming. Scala, with its hybrid nature and advanced language features, has a steeper learning curve, especially for developers who are new to functional programming concepts.

Java vs Scala