mention Scala on landing page and colophon page

[SethTisue]

on discord, @jducoeur indicated that some form of the landing page change would be welcome

it's of course bikesheddable exactly where to insert "Scala" and whether it should be a link. here's one possibility

[jducoeur]

Makes sense to me, although I'll defer to Arman and Andrew, who have been driving the vision so far.

[SethTisue]

Andrew already altered the colophon page to mention Scala further down, but I (mildly) think my change (to also mention it right up front) is desirable. the first mention will serve to emphasize that the whole thing is Scala-based; the later mention then adds that y'all are using Scala for your scripting, too

[valencik]

Yeah the colophon changes can be "both"

It's the landing page I wanna think more about.
I feel like this is becoming too much:

[jducoeur]

Interesting point. I like it in principle, but I agree that the link comes out way too bold visually.

Can/should we treat this as a style thing, and switch it to old-fashioned underscore?

[SethTisue]

or just un-link it and figure those who know, know, and those who don't, can google?

[armanbilge]

quoting Seth from Discord:

the word "Scala" appears nowhere on the landing page. oversight, or deliberate omission?

I have been reflecting on this, and I am realizing that this was actually deliberate choice on my part, albeit subconscious enough that I was not sure at first. Working to stand up the Foundation as a 501(c)(3) public charity and the surrounding discussions we have had about what Typelevel is have influenced some of my thinking.

My hypothesis is that not putting Scala front-and-center on our landing page may help us appeal to a broader audience. Essentially, I am getting at the nuance between:

• We develop functional programming libraries for the Scala community/ecosystem.
• We develop functional programming libraries for everyone, using the Scala language.

My (possibly unfounded) fear is that by mentioning Scala too upfront, potential users may move along because they are not using the Scala programming language.

Instead, my vision for the website is to entice curious developers with functional programming and compelling examples of how to use our stack, and that they will learn about Scala along the way :)

[reardonj]

My (possibly unfounded) fear is that by mentioning Scala too upfront, potential users may move along because they are not using the Scala programming language.

Instead, my vision for the website is to entice curious developers with functional programming and compelling examples of how to use our stack, and that they will learn about Scala along the way :)

I could see this working if there was a next page showing the user more specifically what the benefits of using Cats/CE/fs2/etc. Presumably this would include some explanation of why Scala is a specifically good choice for all this. The current site though is pretty cryptic and users really only have the project page to figure out what is going on right now, which has cryptic tags like js, jvm, native.

IMO, it might be helpful for the time being to mention Scala so uninformed visitors (and search engines) have some notion of what is going on.

[SethTisue]

@armanbilge I can understand your line of thinking here, but I fear you are taking it too far

If the front page says "Scala" nowhere, you're just withholding information that answers what would be nearly any programmer's literally first question

The likely reaction from website visitors IMO is "wtf, what on earth, why didn't you just say so? (and what other obvious information are you withholding from me?)"

here's a possible alternative solution. wdyt about instead of having it in the huge banner, adding it below, in smaller type, here:

Typelevel is an ecosystem of Scala-based projects [...]

this would allow the emphasis to stay where you wanted it, yet still puts the answer to Everyone’s Big Obvious First Question on the front page

[SethTisue]

new proposed state:

[armanbilge]

Thank you everyone for the feedback! And for your patience, sorry it took me a while to circle back here.

I can understand your line of thinking here, but I fear you are taking it too far

Yes, indeed, I completely agree. I also want to share something @jducoeur wrote on Discord that I found insightful (emphasis added):

I can see your point, but I disagree: our Scala basis is important, and is an integral part of why TL is as good as it is. I think not saying that clearly upfront does more harm than good.

Thanks again @SethTisue, this is great! 😊