108 engineers on Hacker News describe using Scala first-hand: 36 endorse it, 13 regret it, 11 are mixed.
“I've dedicated lots of my time to working with it (almost 15 years at this point!)”
regret · production · 15 yr · Rogach · 2025-12-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Java just doesn't encourage such terrible cleverness that Scala (and to a lesser extent python and js) invites.”
regret · production · ye-olde-sysrq · 2023-03-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We do this the other way around, by using Scala.js so we can use Scala on the frontend as well as the backend. It's very nice.”
endorse · production · lmm · 2022-12-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The startup I co-founded used Scala (never again ;-) on the JVM eco system”
regret · production · KingOfCoders · 2022-11-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Investing in Scala ten years ago prepared me well for Kotlin and modern Java”
endorse · production · 62951413 · 2021-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I really like what Odersky and the Scala community did with Scala 3”
endorse · personal · esarbe · 2021-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The last time I tried Scala it was horrendous. SBT? Seriously? Binary incompatibility between minor versions?”
regret · personal · StreamBright · 2021-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I work at a small company that has been using Scala for 7 years.”
endorse · production · 7 yr · philipkglass · 2021-12-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've spent most of my career doing work in Scala that's very much real-world”
endorse · production · lmm · 2020-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using Scala for 10 years and never used monad transformers. At this point I wouldn't trade it for any other language.”
endorse · personal · 10 yr · ebruchez · 2020-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala was great, but unfortunately it made it difficult to onboard new team members into the project”
mixed · production · amzans · 2020-11-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala runs fine on JDK13 (probably 14 too, but we currently run one Play project in prod on 13).”
endorse · production · pas · 2020-04-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Personally I am making top money on Scala gigs, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.”
endorse · production · ccthr · 2019-12-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Used Scala in production for two years and have been writing Kotlin for a year now. I'd still prefer Scala to Kotlin any day as I still think it's a stronger language.”
endorse · production · 2 yr · ayberk · 2019-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Once you do more with Scala than "better Java" it is easy to create a mess full of "try to be clever" code you will regret a year later.”
regret · personal · cryptos · 2019-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using Scala in Production for 5 years - microservices to streaming to batch jobs.”
mixed · production · 5 yr · manojlds · 2019-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've found using a debugger with Java or Scala more rewarding than using one with Clojure.”
endorse · personal · dwohnitmok · 2019-11-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I ended up choosing Scala for a recent, fairly large, project of mine and I'm convinced it was the right decision.”
endorse · personal · lopatin · 2018-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“every time I saw it in production it was pretty horrid.”
regret · production · jwhitlark · 2018-10-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Our property tests are written in Scala as a Monad for controlling execution and random sample generation”
endorse · production · freels · 2018-07-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run a large (1M+ LOC) Scala codebase and don't have these particular issues”
endorse · production · foobarbazetc · 2018-06-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We were extremely productive in Scala because the language was a bit more powerful.”
endorse · production · runT1ME · 2017-08-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it's still a good strongly typed language to build a robust project on”
mixed · personal · neya · 2017-07-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I worked on a commercial project that used Scala. Never again. Compiles were slow, IDE support was terrible”
regret · production · icedchai · 2017-05-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I used Scala for a few years. I actually prefer python to it though.”
mixed · production · 3 yr · brianwawok · 2017-02-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using it in production for a few years now and I find it can be quite pretty if you're careful”
endorse · production · 3 yr · justinhj · 2016-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we were all productively able to transition over for the better.”
endorse · production · zZorgz · 2016-06-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I had to go up to at least 1 GB VMs to get my medium complexity Scala app to work in prod”
regret · production · brianwawok · 2016-02-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The problem with Scala is it that it's too complicated. This results in slow compile times, poor IDE support... I worked with Scala for about 10 months back in 2011. Never again.”
regret · production · 0.8 yr · icedchai · 2015-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It's fantastic to work with once you've learned it, but it's not a path for everyone”
endorse · production · txrit · 2015-09-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using Monads in Scala for not throwing wild exceptions, but still being able to stop the computation immediately if needed.”
endorse · personal · pimeys · 2015-07-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“at Monsanto (Fortune 200) we use Scala heavily now, starting from one project in 2010 and now a dozen teams use it for many many production projects”
endorse · production · 5 yr · ryan_richt · 2015-07-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've rebuilt two startups from Scala / Python messes with Haskell.”
regret · production · Ixiaus · 2014-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala is my favorite language. Being able to use it instead of Java or Clojure is worth a good 15K a year for me.”
endorse · production · hibikir · 2014-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala had its time, and I was a frequent user, but now I am not sure where it is going.”
mixed · personal · hrjet · 2014-10-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our defect rate in production dropping by 90% (!!!) when we switched from Groovy to Scala, with a notable increase in productivity”
endorse · production · zoomerang · 2014-09-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I think (thought?) about Scala as ycombinator for language features.”
mixed · personal · benjaminjackman · 2014-09-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it sucks anyway comparing to scala which is our server side”
endorse · production · skavish · 2014-03-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It's the most enjoyable language I've ever coded in. We switched away from Java for most new development.”
endorse · production · thescrewdriver · 2014-02-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I benchmarked a real Scala web app running on worse hardware (a 1GB Linux VM) at over 650 requests/s.”
endorse · production · noelwelsh · 2013-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Python for REST API, Scala for the algorithm or heavy computing, and R for the visualization of data.”
endorse · production · MojoJolo · 2013-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala is just too big for my needs, a skyscraper when I need a house.”
regret · personal · disputin · 2013-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use Scala in production, have done so for the last 2 years, have been learning a lot about FP and loved every minute of it.”
endorse · production · 2 yr · bad_user · 2013-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Going forward our new code is all in Scala.”
endorse · production · saryant · 2013-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Scala is a brilliant functional programming language, but if you are thinking switching from Ruby/Python/etc would be easy, then you are wrong.”
mixed · personal · neya · 2013-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been programming Scala in production for years... Scala is the best language for the job”
mixed · production · kasey_junk · 2013-12-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use it for production systems at a large multinational investment bank.”
endorse · production · 1 yr · NickPollard · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using Scala for the past 3 months in a play framework app that serves json.”
endorse · production · 0.25 yr · jaxytee · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we run a pretty large scale data crunching system... The move was a big success, and a frequent comment I hear is "I can't imagine moving back to Java".”
endorse · production · karterk · 2013-10-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“This wasn't painful enough to scare me away from Scala in the future, though it does make me leery of using Scala libraries”
mixed · production · rybosome · 2013-07-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We switched from scala to haskell and it has been a huge relief.”
regret · production · papsosouid · 2013-01-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We do it in production for years, works perfectly.”
endorse · production · CCs · 2012-12-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using Scala in anger for about two years now and I still find myself writing what seems to me to be idiomatic Scala code that I have a lot of trouble reading three days later.”
mixed · production · 2 yr · eropple · 2012-12-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I did a summer research internship using Scala and was a very eye-opening experience.”
endorse · personal · yolesaber · 2012-10-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my code is in production and is substantially more complicated than "hello world"”
endorse · production · brightsize · 2012-08-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have been using Scala for 4 months now and have the first cut of our product released... In short we see Scala as a competitive advantage going forward.”
endorse · production · 0.33 yr · jzoidberg · 2011-11-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we switched from Java to Scala a few months ago, and we're all loving it.”
endorse · production · 0.25 yr · nessus42 · 2011-11-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The scala compiler is a little slow (compared to javac).”
regret · production · harryh · 2011-01-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I know Scala and occasionally use it work”
endorse · production · strlen · 2010-11-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We are using 2.8.0 in production and so far it is OK. Porting old 2.7.x code to 2.8 is painful, but new code works as advertised.”
mixed · production · CCs · 2010-11-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the code was written by idiots in "Spark/Scala" (their favorite buzzword”
neutral · production · lisbbb · 2025-10-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've worked in prod with all the cool languages (Scala, Haskell, Rust, Go, etc...)”
neutral · production · eddsh1994 · 2023-03-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it probably doesn't help that I've used Scala, Haskell, Rust, etc”
neutral · personal · xwowsersx · 2022-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my teams services are written in Scala, we use DD's JVM agent”
neutral · production · SubMachineGhost · 2022-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Switched to IntelliJ in 2018 when writing Scala.”
neutral · personal · 4 yr · tasuki · 2022-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have no problem refactoring large Scala apps or F# apps or even Rust apps”
neutral · production · darksaints · 2022-11-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I became the only Scala dev in a team who wanted to rewrite the codebase in Typescript.”
neutral · production · throwawaystock · 2022-05-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we replaced each of the hundred+ rails boxes per service with 2 Scala instances per service. Also worked.”
neutral · production · mpweiher · 2021-05-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We switched Ruby -> Scala, and it took considerable training effort and some years before everyone was comfortable.”
neutral · production · l2cluster · 2021-02-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We're building an IDE and those parsers are written differently, and we use Scala packrat parser combinators.”
neutral · production · ibains · 2020-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been working with Python/Scala for my full-time job over the past 3.5 years”
neutral · production · 3.5 yr · amzans · 2020-11-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I write a lot of Scala code, and that language has a bunch of types like 'Tuple2[A, B]'”
neutral · production · chriswarbo · 2020-10-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm back working on scala and akka.”
neutral · production · ninjakeyboard · 2020-05-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“having developed in Scala for years and years. And that works rather well.”
neutral · production · joostdevries · 2019-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“then used Haskell for about a year, and some Scala.”
neutral · production · yogthos · 2018-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our data pipelines are in Python, Java and Scala”
neutral · production · manish_gill · 2018-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I wrote a scala JWT library on a weekend when I was more of an intermediate developer”
neutral · personal · ninjakeyboard · 2018-11-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've also used Haskell and Scala which have advanced type systems.”
neutral · personal · yogthos · 2018-10-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“However, I've also used Haskell and Scala which have advanced type systems.”
neutral · personal · yogthos · 2017-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use IntelliJ over VS Code for writing Scala”
neutral · personal · rockostrich · 2017-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have put Java/Scala/Go/Erlang systems in production, and rarely have I have ever had to worry about GC tuning.”
neutral · production · sriram_malhar · 2017-11-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use Apache Spark (Scala) at work.”
neutral · production · gghyslain · 2016-12-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I wanted to learn the new (Scala) way, but felt all alone in trying to do that.”
neutral · personal · Noseshine · 2016-10-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“primarily, we run Rails on the frontend and Scala on the backend.”
neutral · production · tobz · 2015-10-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we switched to JAR/Docker deployments for Scala some time ago with Jetty instead of WARs”
neutral · production · _Codemonkeyism · 2015-09-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been able to lobby Java-based employers to let me write some internal apps in Scala.”
neutral · production · StevePerkins · 2015-07-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“unlike Scala or Clojure, which I've also tried”
neutral · personal · kcorbitt · 2015-07-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“When tuning a prod Scala deployment a while back, I encountered a nasty "pregnant pause" every once in a while”
neutral · production · AdieuToLogic · 2015-07-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my production skill set includes php, c, c++, python, ruby, erlang, scheme, javascript, scala”
neutral · production · Ixiaus · 2014-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use Scala for a decently large project (220KLOC using wc -l)”
neutral · production · benjaminjackman · 2014-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We've been running scala in production for 4 years, and had our share of NPEs in our code”
neutral · production · 4 yr · joegaudet · 2014-10-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“getting in a screaming fight about Scala implicits”
neutral · personal · kasey_junk · 2014-07-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've also been using IntelliJ for various large projects written in Scala”
neutral · production · kvtrew76557 · 2013-12-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using Scala just to learn Play framework”
neutral · personal · fat0wl · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using Scala for over a year and still have to spend more time learning about the language than writing code in it.”
neutral · personal · 1 yr · geoka9 · 2013-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“All of our MapReduce code is written in Scalding, which is a Scala DSL on top of Cascading”
neutral · production · alexatkeplar · 2013-11-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Now I'm a full on scala/akka developer and don't regret the change one bit.”
neutral · production · ninjakeyboard · 2013-10-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've dabbled in Fortran/PHP/Ruby/Haskell/Scala/Clojure but they become hazy after a while.”
neutral · personal · ww520 · 2012-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“has used Play 1 and 2 in both Java and Scala for side projects”
neutral · personal · state_machine · 2012-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“More recently have been using Play 2.0/Scala”
neutral · personal · paullth · 2012-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using ReactiveMongo for Scala for the past two months”
neutral · personal · 0.2 yr · alexjarvis · 2012-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I just wrote some neural network code, because I'm developing AI for a card game, and I used mutable state”
neutral · personal · michaelochurch · 2012-08-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The "buffer processor" that the article is describing, we implemented using a scala process.”
neutral · production · andma · 2012-03-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We developed some software first in other languages (Java, Scala, Python), usually to make a prototype”
neutral · production · microtonal · 2011-11-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“For the same reason we use Java, C++, Scala, Perl, Closure, Bash, JavaScript, etc...”
neutral · production · linuxhansl · 2011-11-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We've migrated some key parts out to HTTP services written in Scala, Java, or node.js.”
neutral · production · jordibunster · 2011-07-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Here's a video about how we use Riak (and Scala) in production”
neutral · production · bkudria · 2011-06-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been programming Python for many years now, along with a mix of C#, Scala and some F#.”
neutral · personal · jeswin · 2010-08-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?