Scala Tutorial | What is Scala Programming Language?

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This Scala Introduction tutorial will help you in understanding the basics of Scala programming language. You will learn about Introduction to Scala, History of Scala, Scala features, why Scala is popular and preferred over other programming languages, differences between Java and Scala and best books to master Scala language.

So let’s begin our journey with the Scala Tutorial.

What is Scala Programming?

Scala is comparatively new to the programming scene but has become popular very quickly. Below statements with big names show the Scala popularity in the industry:

  • If I had to select a language to use other than Java Programming Language, it would be Scala. – James Gosling, creator of Java
  • If I would have seen ‘Programming in Scala’ book back in 2003, I’d probably have never created Groovy – James Strachan, creator of Groovy
  • None other than Scala Programming can be seen as being ‘replacement of Java’, and the momentum behind Scala is now unquestionable – Charles Nutter, co-creator of JRuby

Scala Programming is a general-purpose language that combines concepts of object-oriented and functional programming languages. It was developed to overcome the problems faced by other languages and can easily be integrated into existing code.

Refer This – A Comprehensive Scala Tutorial

Now let’s see a video Scala Tutorial for your better understanding.

Video Scala Tutorial

Scala History

Scala Programming was first conceived in 2001 at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne by Martin Odersky, who was co-creator of Generic Java, javac, and EPFL’s Funnel programming language. First public release of Scala came in 2004 which was followed by version 2.0 in March 2006. In 2012 it was awarded the winner of the ScriptBowl contest at the JavaOne conference.

Scala Features

Some of the key characteristics of Scala Programming include:

  • It is an object-oriented language that supports many traditional design patterns being inherited from existing programming languages.
  • It supports functional programming that enables it to handle concurrency and distributed programming at the fundamental level.
  • Scala design to run on a JVM platform that helps indirectly using Java libraries and other feature-rich APIs.
  • Scala Programming  is statically typed that prevents it from problems of dynamically typing.
  • It is easy to implement into existing Java projects as Scala libraries can use within Java code.
  • There is no need to declare variables in Scala as Scala compiler can infer most types of variables.
  • Multiple traits designate for a class and then their interface and behaviour can combine.
  • It supports first-class objects and anonymous functions.

Follow this link to know more Features of Scala

Why Scala Is Popular?

One of the key reasons for Scala’s success is its close integration with Java. Scala source code design in a manner that its compiler can interpret Java classes, and can fully utilize Java libraries, frameworks, and tools.

After compilation, Scala programs can run on Java virtual machines (JVM) and Android. For web-based development projects, Scala Programming  can even compile to JavaScript.

However, Scala Programming is far beyond an alternative to Java. It is a more concise language that utilizes simple, easy-to-read syntax, and requires just a fraction of the lines of code when compared to a typical Java program. This makes Scala coding faster and provides easier testing.

Due to the above reasons, companies like Linkedin, Twitter, Coursera, Foursquare etc have ported the majority of their code bases to Scala Programming . Many open source projects like Apache Spark, Apache Kafka etc use Scala for their Core.

Prerequisites to learn Scala Programming

Scala Programming is based on Java, so if you have knowledge of Java syntax, then it’s pretty easy to learn Scala. But if you do not know Java but are aware of any other programming language like C, C++ or Python then also you can learn Scala Programming  very quickly.

Scala Vs Java

Scala Programming has set of features that make it completely different from Java language. Refer Guide for Comparison between Java and Scala to learn about the differences in Scala and Java language to understand how Scala is different from Java.

Books to learn Scala

There are not as many books on Scala Programming as compare to Java or C, but there are still few books to get you start, regardless of your previous programming experience.

So, this is all on Scala Programming Tutorial. Hope you like our explanation.

Summary

If you’re new to programming or looking for a fast, modern language that is a combination of object-oriented and functional programming, Scala must be your choice that is definitely a language worth learning. Hope you like the Scala Tutorial. If you like the Tutorial on Scala Programming, Please Comment.
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  1. Arun says:

    Nice information on scala

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