# Scala 134 Hacker News commenters recommended Scala and 118 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (15 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended as an expressive JVM language with a powerful type system that blends OO and FP, though many find it overly complex and the Scala 3 migration and tooling painful. ## Why people recommend it - Powerful, expressive type system (6 comments): "it really was ahead of its time. Type systems were pretty uncool before Scala. It proved that you could get OO and FP in a single type system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46186499)) "Scala is a great language and I really prefer its typesafe and easy way to write powerful programs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46185212)) "my experience is that if it compiles and looks like what you expect, it's almost certainly correct" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47649582)) - Blends OO and functional programming (3 comments): "it really was ahead of its time. Type systems were pretty uncool before Scala. It proved that you could get OO and FP in a single type system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46186499)) "Scala similarly to the previous examples was a Java-like with Haskell flavor that escaped an academic lab" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244460)) "Scala supports declarative, generative, imperative, meta, and object-oriented paradigms." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092998)) - Scala 3 improvements and syntax (6 comments): "Scala has evolved the last several years to again become perhaps the most interesting big-ish application language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50145188)) "The stuff currently cooking in Scala 3 will once more revolutionize the whole programming language landscape." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198527)) "Removing braces really makes code much easier to read for people who get distracted by useless line noise" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46211506)) - Strong effect libraries like ZIO (3 comments): "Scala does exactly that, and has libraries that e.g. propagate stack traces across fibres automatically and invisibly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135303)) "I say this as someone using Scala 3 with ZIO effects system and Mill build tool and thinks it is fantastic." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862504)) "In Scala (especially ZIO) propagation is all automatic and you just handle it wherever you'd like." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909908)) ## What people warn about - Too many features and styles (5 comments): "most of our engineers dislike it because the language is difficult to understand, has way too many features, and has many ways to solve the same problem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47294527)) "A language that is really popular can manage having 5 ways to do things, but a small community is just going to lose steam." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092814)) "overwhelmed by typesafe abstractions that held theoretical appeal but hampered readability and fragmented the community" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47309591)) - Painful Scala 2 to 3 migration (3 comments): "The language is actually really nice. The "we won't ship dotty as the next version of Scala, just kidding, here it is", the breakage of editors and IDEs that lasted for years, etc (aka, the WAY they did it) make migrating a poor value prop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096106)) "Migrating's been quite challenging. Tooling, which was already a challenge for the language, got worse because it was split between Scala 2 and 3." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085493)) "all the examples and code snippets in the official docs defaulted to the new syntax, making them infuriating to read" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202419)) - Weak or broken tooling (2 comments): "The language is actually really nice. The "we won't ship dotty as the next version of Scala, just kidding, here it is", the breakage of editors and IDEs that lasted for years, etc (aka, the WAY they did it) make migrating a poor value prop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096106)) "Migrating's been quite challenging. Tooling, which was already a challenge for the language, got worse because it was split between Scala 2 and 3." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085493)) - Slow compile times (2 comments): "I would definitely trim like 20% off scala, but I think slow compile times were the main reason." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50143461)) "A single loop might recompile and rerun the application/unit tests enough times that slow compilers like Rust and Scala become detrimental." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946358)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend - [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend - [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend - [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend - [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Scala", https://hackerapproved.com/p/scala/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).