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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: contact |
| 3 | +--- |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +# Minutes of the 27th meeting of the Scala Center, Q4 2022 |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +Minutes are [archived](https://scala.epfl.ch/records.html) on the |
| 8 | +Scala Center website. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +## Summary |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +The following agenda was distributed to attendees: |
| 13 | +[agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/master/agendas/027-2022-q4.md). |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +Center activities for the past quarter focused on in-person events |
| 16 | +(conferences, summits, sprees, meetups, and workshops), online events, |
| 17 | +preparing the Center's 5-year report, fundraising, Metals and its |
| 18 | +debugger, sbt plugin publishing, Scala 3 language improvements, the |
| 19 | +Scala 3 compiler, the Scala Improvement Process, the Scala Toolkit, |
| 20 | +Scala.js, TASTy-Query, TASTy-MiMa, the Scala websites, the EPFL |
| 21 | +Extension School partnership, Advent of Code, Scala 3 Compiler |
| 22 | +Academy, Scastie, Bloop, Coursier, and process automation for Center |
| 23 | +activities. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +Details are below and in the Center's activity report: |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2022-Q4-activity-report.html) |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +No new proposals were received this quarter. |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +Other business discussed included community representatives, |
| 32 | +coordination around tooling, the 2022 Scala Survey, and company |
| 33 | +overviews for Lunatech and VirtusLab. |
| 34 | + |
| 35 | +## Date, Time and Location |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +The meeting took place virtually on Monday, January 16, 2023 at |
| 38 | +12:00pm (UTC). |
| 39 | + |
| 40 | +Minutes were taken by Seth Tisue (secretary). |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +## Attendees |
| 43 | + |
| 44 | +Officers: |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | +* Chris Kipp (chairperson) |
| 47 | + * also board member, representing Lunatech |
| 48 | +* Darja Jovanovic (executive director), EPFL |
| 49 | +* Julien Richard-Foy (technical director), EPFL |
| 50 | +* Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL |
| 51 | +* Seth Tisue (secretary), Lightbend |
| 52 | + |
| 53 | +Board members: |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +* Diego Alonso, 47 Degrees |
| 56 | +* Michel Davit, Spotify (filling in for Claire McGinty) |
| 57 | +* Graham Griffiths, Goldman Sachs |
| 58 | +* Krzysztof Romanowski, VirtusLab |
| 59 | +* Lukas Rytz, Lightbend |
| 60 | +* Daniela Sfregola, Morgan Stanley |
| 61 | +* Eugene Yokota, community representative |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | +Affiliate members: |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | +* Piyush Rana, Knoldus |
| 66 | + |
| 67 | +Piyush Rana introduced himself. He's representing Knoldus, an |
| 68 | +affiliate member of the Center. Knoldus is a company of about 400 |
| 69 | +people, with about 100 Scala developers. Piyush based in Toronto, |
| 70 | +leading the company's Scala division there. Knoldus was recently |
| 71 | +acquired by NashTech. |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +## Management report |
| 74 | + |
| 75 | +This section was presented by Darja. |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | +Twitter and Databricks are leaving the Center's advisory board. |
| 78 | + |
| 79 | +Eugene Yokota, previously the Twitter representative, is now a |
| 80 | +community representative on the board. |
| 81 | + |
| 82 | +Darja highlighted the Center's continuing return to involvement with |
| 83 | +in-person events, under the improved COVID-19 situation. In Q4, Center |
| 84 | +staff participated in the Scala.IO conference in Paris and meetups in |
| 85 | +Warsaw and Lausanne. The Center is organizing a Scala Tooling Summit |
| 86 | +in Lausanne, to be held near the end of Q1 2023. |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +The Center also led or co-led online events such as ScalaCon and the |
| 89 | +Scala Advent of Code. |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +Darja and Adam Goodman gave a keynote, "Towards a Healthy and |
| 92 | +Resilient Scala Community", at ScalaCon. It is available [on |
| 93 | +video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svWnwU5PXxE). |
| 94 | + |
| 95 | +At the time of the meeting, the Center's five-year report wasn't quite |
| 96 | +ready, but a few weeks later it went online |
| 97 | +[here](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/first-five-years/). |
| 98 | + |
| 99 | +Internal training in moderation is still in progress and it is still |
| 100 | +planned to offer a version of this training externally. |
| 101 | + |
| 102 | +Staffing changes: Chris Kipp has joined the Center for a stint of at |
| 103 | +least three months, thanks to the sponsorship of Lunatech. Guillaume |
| 104 | +Martres has joined the Center as a staff engineer. He is already well |
| 105 | +known to the community for his years of work on the Scala 3 compiler |
| 106 | +as part of Martin's lab (LAMP). |
| 107 | + |
| 108 | +Financial report: The Center's funding for the year of 2022 came 44.2% |
| 109 | +from 2022 memberships, 20.4% from 2021 memberships, 25.8% from MOOCs, |
| 110 | +7.8% from EPFL, and 2.0% from donations. Expenses were 91.2% |
| 111 | +salaries, 6.3% governance, and 1.4% travel and events, and 1.1% |
| 112 | +extension school expenses. The Center has a small negative balance |
| 113 | +entering 2023, due to MOOC revenues which are delayed in arriving. |
| 114 | + |
| 115 | +The Center's key work areas for 2023 are: |
| 116 | + |
| 117 | +* Technical and educational infrastructure |
| 118 | +* Governance infrastructure |
| 119 | +* Involving stakeholders |
| 120 | +* Leveraging community contributors |
| 121 | + |
| 122 | +## Technical report |
| 123 | + |
| 124 | +This section was presented by Julien. He presented highlights of the |
| 125 | +Center's technical activities for the whole year of 2022, not just Q4, |
| 126 | +and also showed an annual roadmap for the whole year of 2023. |
| 127 | +Here are the slides: |
| 128 | + |
| 129 | +* [2022/2023 slides](./january-16-2023-annual-roadmap.pdf) |
| 130 | + |
| 131 | +The slides are a condensed summary of the following blog post that |
| 132 | +Julien published a few weeks after the meeting: |
| 133 | + |
| 134 | +* [2022/2023 blog post](https://scala-lang.org/blog/2023/01/31/scala-center-2023-roadmap.html) |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | +For shorter-term review and shorter-term goals, please consult the |
| 137 | +Center's quarterly activity report: |
| 138 | + |
| 139 | +* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2022-Q4-activity-report.html) |
| 140 | + |
| 141 | +And the Center's 2023 Q1 roadmap: |
| 142 | + |
| 143 | +* [roadmap](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2023-Q1-roadmap.html) |
| 144 | + |
| 145 | +These documents are not summarized here in the minutes. |
| 146 | + |
| 147 | +A board member suggested consolidating documentation under fewer |
| 148 | +domains. Currently learning materials are spread across multiple |
| 149 | +domains: scala-lang.org, docs.scala-lang.org, the Metals site, the |
| 150 | +Scala-CLI site, etc. The splits reflect the different histories of |
| 151 | +different tools and the different groups that produce them, but such |
| 152 | +splits can be confusing to newcomers. |
| 153 | + |
| 154 | +There was some discussion about ongoing support for both Scala 2 |
| 155 | +and Scala 3. |
| 156 | + |
| 157 | +## Proposals |
| 158 | + |
| 159 | +No new proposals were received this quarter. |
| 160 | + |
| 161 | +## Scala 2 report |
| 162 | + |
| 163 | +This was presented by Lukas. |
| 164 | + |
| 165 | +At the time of the last board meeting, Scala 2.13.10 had just come |
| 166 | +out. This release has proved stable, so Lightbend doesn't see a need |
| 167 | +to rush 2.13.11 or 2.12.18 releases. They are expected to follow |
| 168 | +in Q2, in accordance with the usual release cadence. |
| 169 | + |
| 170 | +After the meeting, the following Discourse threads for discussion and |
| 171 | +updates on release timing were opened: |
| 172 | + |
| 173 | +* [Scala 2.13.11](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-13-11-release-planning/6088) |
| 174 | +* [Scala 2.12.18](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-12-18-release-planning/6089) |
| 175 | + |
| 176 | +The Lightbend team continues to work on keeping Scala 2 and 3 aligned |
| 177 | +where possible, for example via the `-Xsource:3` compiler option. The |
| 178 | +team also works on supporting migration from 2.12 to 2.13. |
| 179 | + |
| 180 | +In December Lukas submitted |
| 181 | +[SIP-51](https://github.com/scala/improvement-proposals/pull/54), |
| 182 | +"Drop Forwards Binary Compatibility of the Scala 2.13 Standard |
| 183 | +Library", which proposes making it possible to make additions to the |
| 184 | +Scala 2 standard library by relaxing the forward compatibility |
| 185 | +restraint we've long had. An immediate motivation would be to allow |
| 186 | +tweaks like adding optimized implementations of certain collections |
| 187 | +methods, but larger changes could also be considered. |
| 188 | + |
| 189 | +## Other business |
| 190 | + |
| 191 | +### Community representatives |
| 192 | + |
| 193 | +Chris gave an update on the process of finding community |
| 194 | +representatives for the board, after Rob and Bill stepped down. He |
| 195 | +said a committee gathered a list of candidates but many of them |
| 196 | +couldn't accept, for various reasons. But Eugene accepted, and the |
| 197 | +community was notified by this [blog |
| 198 | +post](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2023/01/10/new-ab-community-rep.html). |
| 199 | + |
| 200 | +Eugene made remarks in favor of continued support and attention for |
| 201 | +Scala 2, and for ongoing attention to applying Scala to particular |
| 202 | +application areas and not just as a general-purpose language. He |
| 203 | +observes that people and companies often come to Scala out of interest |
| 204 | +in a particular frameworks or usage scenario, rather than interest in |
| 205 | +the language per se. He also mentioned that improved support for JDK |
| 206 | +11 and 17 in tooling could use attention. |
| 207 | + |
| 208 | +### Tooling |
| 209 | + |
| 210 | +As mentioned in Darja's report, the Center is organizing an in-person |
| 211 | +Scala Tooling Summit in Lausanne, to be held near the end of Q1 2023. |
| 212 | + |
| 213 | +Chris mentioned that the summit plan grew out of a series of online |
| 214 | +meetings that the Center has organized recently between Center and |
| 215 | +VirtusLab engineers, the JetBrains Scala plugin team, and other groups |
| 216 | +and individuals working on Scala tooling. He didn't have concrete |
| 217 | +results to share yet but said that he expected the summit to result |
| 218 | +in materials that would be shared with the community. |
| 219 | + |
| 220 | +### 2022 Scala survey |
| 221 | + |
| 222 | +The results of the 2022 Scala developer survey were published in a |
| 223 | +[December blog |
| 224 | +post](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2022/12/14/scala-developer-survey-results-2022.html). |
| 225 | + |
| 226 | +Several board members found it concerning that not many developers |
| 227 | +with only a year or two of Scala experience responded to the |
| 228 | +survey. Does that reflect selection bias in survey respondents, or is |
| 229 | +it evidence that we aren't doing enough to bringing new developers |
| 230 | +into the community? Someone pointed out that the survey data doesn't |
| 231 | +clearly indicate how people _came_ to Scala; what were they doing |
| 232 | +before? |
| 233 | + |
| 234 | +But what concrete action could or should the Center take? Perhaps the |
| 235 | +publicity and resources the Center provides could put more emphasis on |
| 236 | +the specific use cases, frameworks, and stacks that actually exist in |
| 237 | +industry. |
| 238 | + |
| 239 | +The Scala 3 usage numbers in the survey may seem surprisingly high, |
| 240 | +since we know that the largest companies using Scala have yet to |
| 241 | +migrate. Martin said he believes that the survey numbers reflect the |
| 242 | +popularity of Scala 3 at startups and smaller shops, and that it's |
| 243 | +normal for adoption of newer technology at large enterprises to |
| 244 | +lag. "There's another world out there," he stated. There was some |
| 245 | +discussion around these issues. |
| 246 | + |
| 247 | +### Company overviews |
| 248 | + |
| 249 | +Chris presented an overview of Scala usage at Lunatech and by its |
| 250 | +customers. |
| 251 | + |
| 252 | +Krzysztof presented something similar for VirtusLab; his remarks were |
| 253 | +based on these [slides](./january-16-2023-virtuslab.pdf). |
| 254 | + |
| 255 | +## Conclusion |
| 256 | + |
| 257 | +As was usual through 2019, we hope to hold an in-person board meeting |
| 258 | +later this year in conjunction with Scala Days. |
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