Poppulo vs. Scala

If you want to create an elaborate, multi-leveled kiosk for your organization, Four Winds Interactive Content Manager Desktop can definitely do that for you. Just know going in that it's not the easiest to operate, and definitely devote time to training. Definitely have a couple of people go through this training, so it's not just one person in your organization that can operate Four Winds.

Incentivized

If you are in the data science world, Scala is the best language to work with Spark, the defacto data science data store. I think that is really the main likely reason I would ever recommend Scala. Another reason is if you already have a team of programmers familiar with functional programming, e.g. they all have years of Haskell experience. In that case, I definitely think Scala is a superior and faster-growing language than Haskell and that picking up Scala after Haskell should be quick.

Incentivized

• Great digital signage software and hardware
• Excellent personal business partner with fabulous account representatives
• Top notch execution team willing to go the extra mile

• Compatibility with Java: if you are switching off of Java onto a new language, one reason to pick Scala is that it is about 99% compatible with Java, so any Java libraries or code you were using before can be called from Scala (not vice-versa though).
• Great built-in features for managing concurrency (e.g. Futures, Actors, and Akka). Making the most of every single thread on the machines your Scala code is running on is much easier and safer than doing it with Java. Scala abstracts away thread pools and threads quite well with Futures. I wouldn't say Futures are easy to learn though....but they are definitely safer to use than pure threads.
• Null-pointer safety: In Scala, null pointers are rare because most libraries pass around a class called Option when whatever you are referencing could possibly be null. Options are first-class and the functional nature of Scala combined with Options means you can almost always avoid referencing a null directly using Option.map or Option.flatMap (see here for what they do https://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/scala/Option.html). That means you'll almost never encounter another null-pointer exception unless you do something quite stupid and avoidable. Java has Options for helping with this now, but it's not widely used and not nearly as powerful.

Incentivized

• There is a big learning curve - the program is complex and not the easiest to learn
• Works great once you know what you're doing, but can be tricky to operate

Incentivized

• The social media feed is not editable.
• The social media feed cuts off link previews in posts, which can hurt posts that rely on visual context.

Incentivized

Their support is always spot-on, although they can be a bit delayed following up depending on the type of issue you're having.

The Scala community is still pretty active and friendly. Martin Odersky, the creator Scala, and his team are sill quite passionate and gone above-and-beyond to fix bugs and address the need for more features. They also have a company called Lightbend that will help you integrate Scala into your engineering stack. I have heard mixed things about them but never worked with them myself so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Incentivized

Simply put, FWi outperforms just about any other software solution by being more adaptable and more reliable, while being competitively priced for its class (top shelf). It's not as cheap as using "free" signage software that's in the cloud, or built into display screens (LG), but if you plan on doing more than running slides and you plan on doing it in multiple locations and screens, this is the platform to do it on - especially if your venues and needs vary across the network.

• The FWI display system has allowed us to create some very unique and one of a kind promotions that help us maintain a leading role in the Las Vegas locals market.
• The savings from not printing posters and other collateral have nearly paid for the display system in a very short time.
• The display system also allows us to promote many different things in a single location, unlike print.
• We can also advertise to different demographics based on location within a property such as gaming floor, floor perimeter, and non-gaming areas.

• Scala has helped market accounts in-branch in a more visually engaging way than your garden-variety collateral.
• Scala players have shut down on more than one occasion, and it can take time to order and receive a replacement.

Incentivized