What are the benefits of using Scala in .Net?

Question

Scala is a peculiar programming language in that it targets both JVM and the CLR. But what are the benefits? Is it worth considering it as a viable alternative to the F# language?

Answer 1

Scala on .NET is an ongoing effort led by Miguel Garcia. Latest state is that we are almost able to bootstrap on .NET. I have no doubts that something solid will come out of this but it's still too early to make commitments when.

Long term, I do not see Scala as a competitor to F# or C#. It would be hard to compete on an equal footing with languages that are natively suppported by Microsoft. On the other hand, I do see some attraction of Scala for shops that want to run on .NET as well as on the JVM.

Answer 2

Most of the web search hits I see from "Scala .NET" are from 2008 or early 2009. Scala is an interesting language, but my admittedly-ill-informed impression is that is is not a "viable alternative" for an industrial-strength .NET application.

I see people talk in passing about writing apps that are portable across CLR and JVM, and it's a nice idea in theory, but in practice I don't see any evidence that anyone has done this for reals. (If people do know of examples, please post them.)

Answer 3

I really love Scala but in the current state of its .NET implementation: A Big NO. It hasn't been updated in a while. The JVM version is really a lot ahead. I don't see Scala's .NET port maturing enough to match its JVM counterpart in a foreseeable future.

You'd be better off with F#.