Scala vs. Java: What's the future?

[asadya2]

I’ve been digging into the Texera codebase recently and noticed it mixes Scala and Java. Scala’s a nice language, but since it’s not super common in industry, it can be tough for people to jump in and contribute to the Scala parts using their usual day‑to‑day experience.

So I’m curious what’s the long‑term plan for the project? Are you thinking about eventually standardizing on one language, or is the current mix something you plan to keep? Would there be interest if someone works on migrating Scala modules to Java?

[chenlica]

We started the system using Scala. We haven't thought about any reason to change it. Can you share more thoughts?

[zuozhiw]

Hi @asadya2 appreciate the effort and interest in the Texera project. First, mix scala/java code is actually quite common in OSS projects, e.g. both Apache Spark and Apache Flink, two very popular data processing frameworks, are mixed Java/Scala projects, with lots of important code written in Scala. E.g. Spark's catalyst optimizer is almost entirely in Scala, as it benefits from Scala's more concise syntax.
Second, we are open to contributions to both Scala and Java, if an existing piece of code works well in Scala, unfortunately it doesn't make too much sense to migrate them to a different language just for the sake of migrations, in the meantime, there are some starter tasks available, if there's a desire to find more starter tasks, we would encourage contributors to play with the system. The system still has lots of rooms for improvements. Thanks!

[carloea2]

I migrated some Java code to Scala few months ago, the reason was because Scala syntaxis allowed a better user experience to develop Python Native Operators. Some operators may still be written in java, if so I think it would be better to still migrate them to Scala if not too complex.

[chenlica]

@carloea2 Thanks. Please include 1-2 related PRs to benefit the discussion.

[carloea2]

This was the main PR I can remember: #4189

[asadya2]

Thanks to all for sharing your perspectives. I already have asked the students to go through the Texera onboarding material including the videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPCcGLelASE&list=PLU2nAISmx3G7NZW9IeHpN7lDWqYnmIYMT).

3 students have picked up starter tasks on the frontend, and two of them are looking into the backend starter tasks.

Looking forward to contributing to Texera!