I wanted Scala to be my "better Java" for a long time, mainly because it seemed to have plentiful headroom as I seek to learn more. The community enthusiasm was also contagious.

But: 1) the ecosystem makes it seems like I need to be a genius enough to learn a new DSL a bit too often, and everything is so...complex, which leads to...

2) It is hard to pitch to an organization because of the learning curve if you assume any project maintainer must learn scala to expert level. I failed (in one attempt on a scala mailing list) to pitch to the scala community the idea of having language levels: a compiler switch or the like that would guarantee that a given project will be maintainable by java programmers with only N (1-2 I hope, for the first level) hours of scala training or study, maybe another level for adding certain features (or listing them in a config file), and full-on expert. So teams can be formed with realistic long-term maintainability in mind. Edit: This may be practical with add-ons I didn't try yet.

3) It was unclear what would be the best reasonable, maintainable way to use sqlite. (Edit: in a multiplatform way to include at least BSD, linux, windows, mac. Maybe call a native code library for each? Sounds like lots of work and maintenance to do it well.)

4) Startup times, future viability of scala native (edit: or equivalent), and whether it helps or adds enough more complexity given all the above, to just learn Rust and (hopefully) simplify life (in some ways).

5) And you have to learn java first (for those who didn't know it already), and know its libraries and idioms to some extent. Will that still likely be true?

Comments welcome. (I enjoyed the article.) Maybe I'm just the type that wants to hit the sweet spot between what C, Java, and Scala do (edit: and Scheme), in a way that is hopefully/eventually at a complexity level that is inviting to other devs, but with plenty of learning headroom for my future growth.

I don’t understand your comment about SQLite. Doesn’t the driver manage creating a standard SQLite file? This shouldn’t really be Scala related.

Example connecting: https://github.com/tkawachi/sqlite-scalikejdbc-test/blob/mas...

Right, it's more of a JVM issue which affects scala. I did a search a while (couple years?) ago and maybe just didn't find the right materials, but they all (in my now-vague memory) seemed awkward and/or were not portable across platforms. Does this approach let you do every kind of sqlite operation, as completely as if from the interactive native client or as if calling it from C? Who maintains it and is it kept in sync with the C version? (Maybe I'll go look that up, but if you already know...) Thanks much for the info.

Edit: ps (maybe a note to myself as much as anything in case I go look up this stuff): And does sqlite run in the same process as the app? Can the app process control the db location?

I know Android uses it a lot, so I opened up an Android project at my company and it looks like the android SDK comes with a bunch of SQLite abstractions, and it's not clear what the underlying driver is. But the SQLite official website ships an Android AAR so maybe that is it? (https://www.sqlite.org/2020/sqlite-android-3310100.aar)

This seems to be the main general-purpose JVM lib: https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc and it seems to be keeping in lockstep with the official SQLite versions (within a couple months).

Edit: Also can you elaborate on the "in a multiplatform way"? Maybe I'm having a brain-fart or memory-hole but shouldn't you not have to worry about that at all?

Edit2: Looks like there is a nice blurb in the docs on that github page:

  Since sqlite-jdbc-3.6.19, the natively compiled SQLite engines will be used for the following operating systems:

  Windows (Windows, x86 architecture, x86_64)
  Mac OS X x86_64 (Support for SnowLeopard (i386) has been deprecated)
  Linux x86, x86_64, arm (v5, v6, v7 and for android), ppc64
  In the other OSs not listed above, the pure-java SQLite is used. (Applies to versions before 3.7.15)

  If you want to use the native library for your OS, [build the source from scratch.