Re: Melb Scalasphere

[Tom Adams]

I think there's a fair bit going on, though nothing like the "java" or ".net" scenes. We first started doing scala & released our first app into production in early 2008. Off the top of my head other things going on right now:

A company building mining software in Brissie (can't name sorry)

Remember the milk (devs in at least Brisbane)

The Play lead (& one more?) are in Sydney

Oomph (us, couple of production scala apps)

NICTA in Sydney & Brisbane, scala & haskell (Tony & Mark are running workshops at lambdajam this month!)

Ephox used to do a lot, but most of them went to NICTA!

Jason who works for Typesafe is a brissie boy, though now based in Switzerland.

Cloudbees do a bit out of Sydney (Michael Neale) though mainly erlang I believe

Atlassian have some stuff going on too

Also, the Brisbane functional programming group has over 400 members, we regularly get 50-60 along to a meetup. I don't believe any of the other (tech) meetups (except maybe the ruby one) get more than that in Brisbane.

Tom

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Clarence Bakirtzidis <clar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,  I've recently gained an interest in Scala -- kind of by accident really -- and now I'm looking to invest more time in it.  I was building "yet-another-internal-crud-app" at my current client to replace an ASP.NET WebForms/VB.NET app which was a shining example of "worst-practices".  Because we're using Java technologies we decided to stick with that stack but decided to try out the Play Framework (2.x).  I really liked it and picked it up over the course of a few days -- well enough to implement a basic replacement app.  It was actually through the Scala view templates that got me thinking about learning Scala (not that there is much code in them but you get the picture).  I started browsing the TypeSafe site and doing a few tutorials here and there (e.g. Twitter Scala School) and discovered the "Functional Programming Principes in Scala" course on Coursera (I'm currently enrolled in that).  I am completely new to both Functional Programming and Scala but I find them both completely refreshing and I'm excited to learn more.  I've mostly been using Ruby (not just Rails) the last few years and that was becoming a bit repetitive for me.

My impressions so far are that Scala and the related stack (e.g. Akka, Play, SBT, etc) seem pretty solid and appear to be gaining traction with some well known companies.  I'd like to know what the scene is like here in Melbourne.  From browsing a few of the posts on this group, it looks like it's a small community here and not a lot of significant projects going on (other than side/pet projects).   Is this the case?  I hope I'm wrong as I'd love to see Scala become more popular and viable option for new projects.  I've been at ThoughtWorks for 4 years now and I've only heard of one Scala project (in Australia) in that time (the one Korny was on).

Anyway, I'll end here as I am probably babbling now.

Cheers,

Clarence - "Scala newbie and fan"

PS. Hi Ken and Ben :p

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tom adams
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[Ben Hutchison]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Clarence Bakirtzidis
<clar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, I've recently gained an interest in Scala ... I'd like to know what the scene is like here in Melbourne.

> From browsing a few of the posts on this group, it looks like it's a small
> community here and not a lot of significant projects going on (other than
> side/pet projects). Is this the case?

Hi Clarence, and welcome,

From Tom's email it sounds like there's more going on up in Brisbane
and Sydney, but I reckon your impression of Melb's Scalasphere is
reasonably accurate. AFAIK there's projects and individuals using
Scala here and there, but no "job market" as such yet. Thats in
contrast to the US and Europe where Scala has taken off.

That said, the Melb Scala group had it's 4th birthday last month, so
there is enough interest to sustain a monthly user group.

-Ben

[Ken Scambler]

Welcome Clarence!  It'll be good to see you at the meetup if you come along.  I'll be interested to hear your experiences with Play pan out.

Cheers mate,

Ken

[Jason Koch]

Hi Clarence

Did you have a play with the new Activator kit, by chance? Has anyone else yet?

I've downloaded it, but trying to shelve it for a time when I've got a few decent moments. Twitter seems to be pretty impressed with it.

Jason

[Clarence Bakirtzidis]

Actually, I downloaded it earlier today :p  It seems quite good as a learning tool - e.g. edit code in browser and see results in there as well.  Its got built in tutorials.  I only just started looking at it but might hold off until after the Coursera course is over before I look at it properly.

- Clarence

[Nicholas Ren]

Aslo, in ThoughtWorks China, we just started a project for a local client, which based on Scala stack:  sbt + scala + lift. :)

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Nicholas Ren (任晓君)

ThoughtWorks | Xi'an | GMT+8