[HN Gopher] The Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in Scala
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The Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in Scala
Author : bishabosha
Score : 88 points
Date : 2026-01-29 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scala-lang.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scala-lang.org)
| betaby wrote:
| Why would the governments invest money on such a niche language?
| "Scala is widely used to build and operate essential systems
| across multiple industries." - very bold statement.
| nish__ wrote:
| I made another comment about it. But the answer is Scala is the
| number one language for building hardware these days via
| Chisel.
| betaby wrote:
| https://www.chisel-lang.org/community
|
| second link - 404
|
| third link - achieved project on github
|
| fourth link - educational project
|
| Perhaps it's a very know and useful project, yet indeed seems
| very niche to me.
| wk_end wrote:
| Chisel is very neat but "the number one language for building
| hardware"? VHDL and SV are the only things in this space that
| actually matter. Chisel is still a blip for now.
| nish__ wrote:
| "...these days." Don't quote me out of context.
| wk_end wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand what you think "these days"
| means or how what I said was incompatible with it.
| nish__ wrote:
| Ok, let's say you were going to start a brand new project
| today. What tech would you use?
| ldayley wrote:
| As a European project the foundation is likely pursuing funding
| from EU sources using the fact that it isn't US tech as a
| selling point.
| beastman82 wrote:
| Probably because it's an amazing language for people who know
| what they're doing
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Is it niche? Scala is arguably the single most successful
| functional language. It interoperates with the whole JVM
| ecosystem. It's probably the #3 JVM language after Java and
| Kotlin.
|
| Spark is Scala, Twitter was (is?) Scala
| https://sysgears.com/articles/how-and-why-twitter-uses-scala...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Anything that runs on JVM should not be invested in.
| iberator wrote:
| Why? I bet you never even wrote custom VM for your
| lang/architecture.
|
| There are like dozen of implementations for JVM alone: sun,
| Oracle, gnu, IBM etc etc
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Because the idea of classes is baked into JVM. So when
| writing inline code, with groovy, scala, kotlin, whatever
| else, the compiler has to basically insert fake classes
| into the jvm.
|
| This may seem trivial, but because its fundamentally
| "hacky" its not something that is ever going to be as
| easy to work with and expand.
| neko-kai wrote:
| This is nonsense. And, not that there's anything wrong
| with classes, but compilers no longer need to 'insert
| fake classes' for anonymous functions since Java 8.
| bachmeier wrote:
| There's also scala.js and Scala Native, even if the JVM is
| the primary platform.
| epolanski wrote:
| Scala was niche (but of course, you need to define niche
| first) and its market share has shrunk further in the last
| decade.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Scala is arguably the single most successful functional
| language.
|
| That would be Javascript.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| You're being downvoted but you aren't necessarily wrong.
| Javascript is probably one of the most approachable
| functional-like languages without being dogmatically
| functional.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Scala may have fallen out of favor but was quite popular few
| years ago. And perhaps still is the most popular EU-designed
| language (developed by EPFL).
| oytis wrote:
| Python. Python is the most popular language designed in EU.
| EPFL is not even in EU
| epolanski wrote:
| Others worth mentioning are Kotlin, Ada, Pascal, Haskell,
| Zig, Erlang, Elixir, Prolog, Ocaml.
| rapnie wrote:
| Former EU, there's Gleam.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Kotlin is from St Petersburg, it's even named after an
| island near it.
| epolanski wrote:
| St. Petersburg is in Europe.
|
| I thought what was worth mentioning was being European or
| not, rather than being part of an European legal entity
| or not.
| Y-bar wrote:
| PHP is also from Europe. Not sexy perhaps, but popular
| enough to mention.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| How is Zig an EU language?
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| True to both. My brain not braining. Was thinking Europe-
| based/driven. Python started in CWI but PSF is USA-based.
| seanhunter wrote:
| > EPFL is not even in EU
|
| For people who don't get this, EPFL is the Swiss Federal
| Technical Institue in Lausanne. Switzerland isn't part of
| the EU or EEA but has instead integrated itself with the EU
| very closely via a mindboggling number of bilateral
| agreements with the EU members and the Schengen agreement
| which allows for free, borderless movement. This has the
| effect of making it seem very much like they are part of
| the EU without actually being as such.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_
| U...
| oytis wrote:
| Maybe they've applied for the grant 10 years ago when Scala was
| all rage
| bachmeier wrote:
| It wouldn't have to be used in very many places to justify a
| 377k investment. A few big European banks alone would be worth
| it. Their website says "we invest globally in the open software
| components that underpin Germany's and Europe's competitiveness
| and ability to innovate". The fact that Scala is used at a
| university could also be classified as innovation. This is a
| minor amount of money if you're going to compare it with a STEM
| or medical research grant.
| agentcoops wrote:
| I don't know what it looks like on the ground now, but Scala
| was the defacto language of data infrastructure across the
| post-Twitter world of SV late stage/growth startups. In large
| part, this was because these companies were populated by former
| members of the Twitter data team so it was familiar, but also
| because there was so much open source tooling at that point. ML
| teams largely wrote/write Python, product teams in JS/whatever
| backend language, but data teams -- outside of Google and the
| pre-Twitter firms -- usually wrote Scala for Spark, Scalding
| etc in the 2012-2022ish era.
|
| I worked in Scala for most of my career and it was never hard
| to get a job on a growth stage data team or, indeed, in
| finance/data-intensive industries. I'm still shocked at how the
| language/community managed to throw away the position they had
| achieved. At first I was equally shocked to see the Saudi
| Sovereign Wealth fund investing in the language, but then
| realized it was just 300k from the EU and everything made
| sense.
|
| It's still my favorite language for getting things done so I
| wouldn't be upset with a comeback for the language, but I
| certainly don't expect it at this point.
| nish__ wrote:
| I learned recently that one of the killer apps for Scala seems to
| be in hardware design. Chisel [0] is the core technology of the
| best open source RISC-V chips. Chipyard [1] is designing leading
| edge type OOE and AI chips and all of the code is written in
| Scala. Personally, I can't wait for some of these designs to
| start being mass produced and put in laptops and phones.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisel_(programming_language)
|
| [1] https://github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard
| abeppu wrote:
| So, as a justification for support of scala, the thing that
| seems lacking to me is that Chisel seems to still be centered
| around scala 2? E.g. their recommended template for getting
| started still uses scala 2 ... so without support to motivate
| them to use scala 3, it's not obvious that Chisel benefits much
| from current work on the scala language? I have not fully
| understood the Chisel project but I see they have a "compiler
| plugin" which suggests to me that moving fully off scala 2
| requires a meaningful redesign.
|
| https://github.com/chipsalliance/chisel-template/blob/main/b...
| appplication wrote:
| I'm not super plugged into scala but I work with Spark quite
| a bit and my observation has been the whole scala 2.13 -> 3
| transition is a huge mess for just about everyone who touches
| it. I don't have enough hands-on context to understand why
| it's so painful but it seems to be similar or worse to the
| python 2.7 -> 3 transition in terms of sticking friction.
| abeppu wrote:
| It is a mess. I've spent some time trying to convert some
| academic oss projects and some removed features really
| force large redesigns. I think rather than funding the
| stuff on this announcement, I wish they would fund a team
| of experts to work on migration of a prioritized list of
| projects. This would both provide example patterns of
| migrating substantial projects and unblock projects who
| have been saying "we would like to try migrating but
| library X we use still hasn't"
| nightpool wrote:
| Well, a more optimistic take here is that if future
| development on the Scala language was funded explicitly
| by/for people who are current using Scala 2, that means that
| the developers would more clearly understand their
| requirements in terms of making an easier transition for
| users moving from Scala 2 -> 3
| throwup238 wrote:
| Chisel absolutely isn't the type of software that benefits
| from upgrading because it's largely standalone. They could be
| the last project still stuck on 2.x a decade from now and it
| wouldn't make much of a difference to its users.
|
| I've only used Chisel for a few projects but I've never used
| anything _but_ Chisel in those codebases. Simulation,
| verification, and all the painful stuff in FPGA /ASIC
| development depends on non-Scala tooling and all of the
| inputs (parametrization) are just read in from JSON files
| produced by scripts in other languages.
|
| It would be _nice_ to be up to date but the hardware NRE is
| so damn high that working around any limitations in Scala
| support is a rounding error. Chisel's outputs are sent out
| for $X00,000 fab production runs so no one gives a damn
| whether it's Scala 2 or 3 as long as it ships a working IC.
| The last time I used Chisel I was working on a mixed signal
| design where the Synopsys Fusion Compiler (maybe Custom
| compiler?) licenses alone ran into the hundreds of thousands
| per year (iirc it was per seat, so we must have spent over a
| million per year on Synopsys alone).
| gmartres wrote:
| Chisel picked up Scala 3 support in 7.0.0 released last
| September (https://github.com/chipsalliance/chisel/releases/t
| ag/v7.0.0), right now they cross-compile between Scala 2 and
| 3 but from what I heard they should eventually move to Scala
| 3 only to start taking advantage of new features like named
| tuples (https://docs.scala-lang.org/scala3/reference/other-
| new-featu...).
| ATMLOTTOBEER wrote:
| Happy to see investment in sbt and the stdlib
|
| Sad to see code coverage tooling called out as something they're
| spending money on
|
| Happy to see scala get sponsorship
| thefaux wrote:
| The lead maintainer of sbt does it as a labor of love. I am
| very curious if he actually will be receiving any money.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| He won't:
| https://bsky.app/profile/eed3si9n.com/post/3mdgbjkg4ck23
| oytis wrote:
| That's the problem with state investments in software. One can
| rightfully complain about misallocation of capital by private
| investors, but state investments are a whole new level.
| epolanski wrote:
| The Albanian government invested 10M in Mira Murati's startup.
|
| All on the basis of her...being Albanian.
|
| Talk about public money mismanagement.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Scala isn't as hot as it used to be. I think the rough Scala 2->3
| transition, coupled with improvements in the base Java language,
| emergence of Kotlin + Android support, and popularity of Python
| in data science and data pipelines (lets just do everything in
| one language became popular) kind of made Scala not quite as
| popular as it could have been. Plus the long compile times are a
| pain. However it seems to have a really high coolness ratio for a
| language. The few jobs I do see in Scala are very cool looking.
| Very few boring looking jobs.
| sh3rl0ck wrote:
| What would you categorise as a "cool looking job"?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Jobs that you work on hard, complicated things. Scala is
| relatively popular in Fintech and Finance in general. There's
| things like Chisel or Spark. But there are relatively few
| simple CRUD app companies using Scala.
| mikert89 wrote:
| Scala is too complicated. Most scala code bases I have worked
| on have no enforced structure, the language allows for all
| sorts of unconventional programming paradigms
| packetlost wrote:
| That's sorta the curse of Lisps too.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| This is exactly what turned me off. It supports so many
| paradigms that every line of code I wrote I had to sit and
| think if I was doing it the "right" way and it was miserable.
| eweise wrote:
| Part of that I think is the culture and not the language.
| Personally I try to use the least powerful method that gets
| the job done and that usually keeps me unblocked. In
| practice that usually means using it as a better Java and
| not going down the functional monad path. I know scala has
| gone through a rough patch and maybe migrating from 2 to 3
| is painful. But if you try starting a new project now with
| the latest Scala 3, I think you'll find that its pretty
| nice. Even IDE support is pretty good.
| Boxxed wrote:
| Yeah I love it when people start defining their own operators
| all over the place and give them all inscrutable names. "Dude
| just use the eggplant parm operator: <<=-=>>"
| ecshafer wrote:
| This is the type of thing that a good PR review culture
| will handle. I love that this is an option in some
| languages. But in a company, you need to decide what cool
| features should be used and when and how much.
| fjordofnorway wrote:
| Good PR review isn't really enough unless the
| organization is only large enough to handle around one PR
| at a time.
|
| With languages like Scala I think its a clearer necessity
| that someone or some small group in an organization
| maintains a dominance of expertise or you have different
| groups that are only using the same language in name or
| facing overhead to keep in agreement where a lot of the
| best developers might be basically doing ambassador work.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| You got it. Scala had a shot being an early mover in the JVM
| functional programming space, but they really shot themselves
| in the foot with their version transition problems and tooling
| issues you allude to. Java is probably "good enough" for most
| shops now, and if you are not bound to the JVM I really don't
| understand why you would go with Scala today.
| rla3rd wrote:
| for spark
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Scala's decline started before Scala 3, which brought its
| share of breakage (sometimes for dubious reasons, like the
| new syntax) but also fixed many warts. Tooling has improved a
| lot lately, but it's too late.
|
| > if you are not bound to the JVM I really don't understand
| why you would go with Scala today.
|
| Scala's metaprogramming abilities coupled to a powerful type
| system are still unmatched. Among mainstream languages, only
| TypeScript gets somewhat close. For your typical service
| oriented architecture, libraries such as Tapir or ZIO HTTP
| are pretty nice. I haven't found anything as pleasant in
| other languages.
|
| That said if an LLM can write 95% of your code today, this
| point is a bit moot, sadly.
| OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote:
| D
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It's not really moot though. The primary benefit of concise
| but robust frameworks like ZIO is that they are easy to
| _read_ (like the program is mostly business logic with
| minimal syntax noise /programming language bookkeeping),
| not that they're easy to write (though that's true too).
| Metaprogramming also works nicely with LLMs because you get
| the expressiveness of something like Python (or better)
| while retaining a strong type checking layer to give a
| feedback loop to the LLM. In fact, it kind of shines with
| an LLM because you largely don't care if things like macros
| are ugly as long as they produce correct code to present to
| the typechecker/compiler, so it makes more sense to vibe
| code the metaprogramming layer to give yourself whatever
| you need to have straightforward business logic.
| Conciseness and direct encoding of business logic also
| helps to keep context focused.
|
| Really this is all true with humans too, but IMO it's
| multiplied with LLMs because they are insanely capable at
| dealing with the guts of metaprogramming wizardry if they
| need to, so you don't end up in a world where that one guy
| that understands it leaves and then no one can possibly
| maintain it.
| bdavisx wrote:
| I haven't used Scala for quite a while now - but a while back
| they had a serious asshole problem with a lot of the community.
| cbeach wrote:
| Here's an emblematic example of the problems in the community
| - Scala Center's executive director Darja Jovanovich berating
| a conference audience with sexualised slurs and swearing:
|
| https://x.com/jdegoes/status/1633888998434193411
|
| And instead of facing any consequences, it's actually the
| whistleblower (John De Goes) who is criticised for calling
| her out.
|
| This issue is rooted in politics (Darja is a political
| sciences graduate with no commercial or academic Scala
| experience - AKA a leftwing DEI hire, whereas John De Goes is
| a powerhouse contributor to the ecosystem who failed to bow
| down to the leftwing establishment that had installed itself
| in the ecosystem).
| yearolinuxdsktp wrote:
| Scala's downfall is the culture of writing libraries with the
| most esoteric syntax imaginable. It's the opposite of Ruby's
| "program with pleasure"---it is "program with maximum
| cleverness" and "if it doesn't look like an obscure math
| equation or symbol soup, it's probably not idiomatic Scala."
| Java's designers were opposed to operator overloading due to
| potential for abuse, and did Scala deliver living
| proof/nightmare scenario of that.
|
| Now I still want operator overloading, because I favor enabling
| instead of disabling approaches, and I want, for example, new
| numeric types to have natural syntax that blends in with built-
| ins, or an equality operator that works consistently. I'll even
| settle for += append to strings and collections.
|
| But even Scala standard libraries take operator use to wild
| extremes. Apparently it's not enough to use + to append
| collections, you must use ++. Except Vec you can add with +.
| There's ++= and ++=:, and /: and :: and ::: and ?^ and ?^.
|
| Spark Scala interface introduces =!= for inequality comparison.
| There's |@| from Cons library. Don't get me started on Akka.
| SBT introduces <++=
|
| Surprisingly you can't override ==, so Spark implements ===.
| And specs2 testing library implements ====.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| I've onboarded experienced and inexperienced developers to
| fairly big Scala codebases for the best part of a decade and
| I can't think of a single time symbolic operators were
| brought up as a source of complexity of confusion. Sbt
| deprecated <++= 10 years ago.
| bearforcenine wrote:
| Agreed. There was a period of time roughly 10-15 years ago
| where symbolic operators in Scala were very en vogue. That
| fell out of style in a big way and I haven't encountered
| symbol soup in a very long time.
|
| Most of the conversations I have with folks about Scala
| issues these days center around implicits, tooling, and its
| decline/lack of popularity.
| 47282847 wrote:
| Is it really accurate to call this an "investment"? The details
| are not known but it looks like a grant or donation by a charity
| rather than an investment?
| brabel wrote:
| I think that any time to expect to get some benefit from it,
| other than a nice feeling for helping out, it should not be
| called a donation, at least not a charity donation.
| Kriev wrote:
| What a waste of my taxes.
| ezst wrote:
| Happy to throw some of mine for that. Scala may not be as
| popular as some other languages, but it's relevant for use
| cases as diverse as those for which you would otherwise use
| Java/C#/Go, JS/TS, C/C++/Rust (via scala-jvm, scala-js and
| scala-native), and it's a very nice language to work with at
| that.
| robert_foss wrote:
| Very on brand for Germany to invest tech 15 years past its prime.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| This was a good joke. Surprised it got downvotes. Must be all
| the Germans who can't take a joke.
|
| (In case you Germans still don't get it -- that was a joke, but
| feel free to downvote :) )
| hocuspocus wrote:
| More like 10. The Scala ecosystem was still really rough in
| 2011, remember how many companies got burnt trying to follow
| Twitter's footsteps (cf. the infamous Yammer testimony).
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| As a longtime Scala lover, I'm so happy to see this. Everyone in
| here hemming and hawing about version incompatibilities, build
| tooling and such conveniently forget the warts of other languages
| and their ecosystems. Scala is an incredible language, especially
| for the language being so flexible, which is a strength, not a
| weakness.
| atbpaca wrote:
| I am very happy for Scala. So many people taking the time to rant
| on it. Yes, you can do anything with Scala in a million different
| ways. So what? So can you do it in C++, Python, Rust, etc. I
| agree that the whole "Category Theory" libraries are way over the
| top, but so are libraries in Java using "factories" everywhere.
| Every language has its pros and cons.
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