Why Scala? | 16+ Reasons to Why Learn Scala

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Why Scala?

Okay, we see all the hype about Scala, you also must have heard about Scala, you want to learn it but you are waiting for a solid reason to learn Scala. Why Scala? This article answers you question “Why should I learn Scala Programming Language?” Let see why Scala is a beneficiary language to learn and what it offers that you. You can share your own reasons to why Scala with us.

1. Type Inference

Scala automatically infers(detects) the data type of an expression partially or fully. This means that we don’t need to declare it ourselves. Such a facility lets the programmer leave out type annotations while still allowing type checking.

So, how does this work? The compiler takes in the types of subexpressions, or those of atomic values like 42(Integer), true(Bool), and so on. It then aggregates this information, and then decides the type for an expression.
Read: Features of Scala

2. Singleton Object

Scala has no static variables or methods. Instead, it makes use of a singleton object. This is essentially a class with only a single object in the source file. We do this using the ‘object’ keyword, and not the ‘class’ keyword. For instance:

object Main extends App {
  println("Hello, World!")
}

Follow this link to know about Scala Singleton & Scala Companion Object

3. Immutability

In Scala, every variable you declare is immutable by default. You cannot change it. However, you can also explicitly declare it to be mutable. You can change the value of such a variable.

Immutable data helps us manage concurrency control, as you would imagine. Once we create an immutable object, we cannot modify its state.

4. Lazy Evaluation

We discussed this when we talked Scala vs Java. Lazy evaluation is when Scala delays evaluating an expression until it absolutely needs it. This is also called call-by-need.
This also avoids repeated evaluations. Lazy evaluation has the following benefits:

  1. We can define control flow as abstractions instead of primitives.
  2. We can define potentially infinite data structures.
  3. Lazy evaluation improves performance.

In Scala, we can have a lazy declaration:
lazy val images=getImages()
Read: Control Structures in Scala

5. Case Classes and Pattern Matching

A Scala case class is a regular one that is immutable by default, and is decomposable via pattern matching. All its parameters are immutable and public by default.

Defining a case class takes the keywords ‘case class’, an identifier, and a parameter list(can be empty).

case class Book(isbn: String)

val frankenstein = Book(“978-0486282114”)

Pattern matching lets us check a value against a pattern. You can use this in place of a switch-statement or a series of if-else statements in Java.

import scala.util.Random
val x: Int = Random.nextInt(10)
x match
{
case 0 => "zero"
case 1 => "one"
case 2 => "two"
case _ => "many"
}

6. Concurrency Control

Scala’s standard library includes the Actor model. Using this, you can implement concurrency in your code. Apart from this, it also has a platform/tool, Akka. It is a separate, open-source framework providing for Actor-based concurrency. You can combine or distribute Akka’s actors with software transactional memory.

7. String Interpolation

Scala String interpolation is the act of evaluating a string literal, consisting of one or more placeholders, to yield a result. In this result, corresponding values replace the placeholders. This is a kind of template-processing.
Since version 2.10.0, Scala offers string interpolation. The three methods it offers for this are- s, f, and raw.

Read: Tuples in Scala

8. Higher-Order Functions

A higher-order function is one that takes another as a parameter, or returns it. This is possible in Scala only because it treats functions as first-class citizens.

val salaries = Seq(20000, 70000, 40000)
val doubleSalary = (x: Int) => x * 2
val newSalaries = salaries.map(doubleSalary) // List(40000, 140000, 80000)

Here, map is a higher-order function.
Such functions also let us implement function compositions, and lambdas.

Read more about Scala Functions in detail

9. Traits

A trait in Scala is a type containing certain fields and methods. You can combine multiple traits.
To define a trait, we use the ‘trait’ keyword:
trait Greeter

{
def greet(name: String): Unit
}

So, a trait is like a partially implemented interface. You can create a trait with abstract, and optionally, non-abstract methods.
Not yet convinced Why Scala is good for you? We have more reasons.

10. Rich Set of Collections

Scala has a huge set of collections in its library. This has classes and traits to help you collect data into a mutable or immutable collection. The scala.collection.mutable package holds all mutable collections. Making use of this package, you can add, remove, and update data. Likewise, the scala.collection.immutable package holds all immutable collections; they don’t let us modify data.
Read: Best Books for Scala

11. Functional

Scala is a language of a functional paradigm. It treats its functions as first-class citizens. This is why it also lets us create higher-order functions- ones that can return a function, or take it as a parameter.

It also supports nesting of functions, and currying(translating evaluation of a function, that takes multiple arguments, into evaluating a sequence of functions, each with a single argument).

12. Object-Oriented

Scala supports object-oriented programming, purely. Every value is an object. We’ll have more on this later.

13. Statically-typed

In most cases, you won’t need to specify redundant type information to Scala; it will figure it out on its own. This is in relevance to type inference.
Read: Scala vs Java

14. Extensibility

Developing domain-specific applications needs domain-specific language extensions. In a way, Scala puts forward a combination of language mechanisms, making it easy to smoothly add new language constructs as libraries. We can do this using facilities like implicit classes and string interpolation. You don’t necessarily need meta-programming features like macros.

15. Scala Runs on the JVM

The Scala compiler turns the source code into byte code. This runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). This makes it a language similar to Java and Groovy.

16. Miscellaneous Features

Some of Scala’s quirks confuse Java programmers:

  1. Where Java mandates that all import statements must be at the top of the source, in Scala, they can be almost anywhere within your whole program.
  2. In Scala, operators are just methods.
  3. Definitely everything looks like an object in Scala.
  4. Here, methods may have multiple parameter lists. Wow! Let’s discuss this in a later lesson, this seems really exciting for a programmer stuck with similar languages.
  5. It is possible to nest methods.
  6. A class’ body is its constructor.
  7. In Scala, we don’t have static methods; we have objects.

This was all about Why Scala article. Hope you like the Why Scala article and have now got the answers to “why should I learn Scala”.

Conclusion

Scala Has many features that makes it special as we saw in the above why Scala post.  Wasn’t this a step ahead in your journey with Scala? But don’t worry if it confuses you with its syntax; we will get to explaining the basics pretty soon. Till then, share love, share happiness.
Next:
Python vs Scala

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1 Response

  1. Kedar Divekar says:

    Thank you for such amazing article.

    May i know use cases of scala in big data world. Like why we have to use scala with spark in big data.Or what problems scala solves in case of big data?

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