2009-12-21

Being a fanboy really does work

I've recently realised that I am a scala fanboy.

When people complain about some problem in their chosen language/framework, my first thought is, "in scala they've solved that problem with _ .".
When I was writing the above sentence, my first instinct is to use the underscore character _ to match whatever scala feature it was I was thinking of. ( _ is a scala idiom which matches anything)
During a "Design patterns" study group, my reaction when I start to understand a pattern is, "oh, that's how people get around not have scala_feature_x".

But it was when I started vocalising these thoughts, that I realised that I was a fanboy.

The suprising thing is:

it actually works.

People are actually listening to my constant "scala, scala scala".

There's at least 4 solid Java developers I know who are now interested enough to start playing around with the language.

I always thought that fanboys were people who just didn't understand that noone else cared about what they cared about, but it turns out that there are people out there listening to fanboy rants.

The other alternative is that I'm actually a scala 'evangelist', but I think you have to get paid for it to be called an evangelist.

anyway, read this:
http://www.codecommit.com/blog/scala/roundup-scala-for-java-refugees

and this excelent book:
http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala

I'll probably have to buy the t-shirt, AND the mug; but I'm not quite ready for the hat though:
http://www.scala-lang.org/shop

oh yeah, scala rocks!

Update:
While I was writing this, yet another of my Java Developer colleges showed interest in scala, and mentioned having to look at it further :)

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