Scala vs Java 8

[Rick Goff]

If I can ask you to represent the Scala perspective, I'd like to ask for your reaction to the Java 8 Lambda project. Are you flattered? Threatened?

Thanks,
Rick

[Paul Chiusano]

I think Java 8 adding anonymous functions is a good thing. It makes it that much easier to do FP from Java, and as a consequence we'll hopefully see more JVM support for optimizing this style of programming. Scala will still be a nicer functional language than Java due to other features like pattern matching, its more powerful type system, and implicit arguments (technically Scala's implicits feature is a bit more powerful than necessary, but something like this is very useful for FP). I don't see Java adding these features anytime soon, or ever.

Also, we are more interested in FP in general, rather than Scala the language in particular. If people start doing pure FP in other languages, I think that's great!