Scala language

5 Key excerpts on "Scala language"

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  Scala and Spark for Big Data Analytics

  • Md. Rezaul Karim, Sridhar Alla(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Packt Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The name Scala comes from a scalable language because Scala's concepts scale well to large programs. Some programs in other languages will take tens of lines to be coded, but in Scala, you will get the power to express the general patterns and concepts of programming in a concise and effective manner. In this section, we will describe some exciting features of Scala that Odersky has created for us:

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  Scala is object-oriented

  Scala is a very good example of an object-oriented language. To define a type or behavior for your objects you need to use the notion of classes and traits, which will be explained later, in the next chapter. Scala doesn't support direct multiple inheritances, but to achieve this structure, you need to use Scala's extension of the subclassing and mixing-based composition . This will be discussed in later chapters.

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  Scala is functional

  Functional programming treats functions like first-class citizens. In Scala, this is achieved with syntactic sugar and objects that extend traits (like Function2 ), but this is how functional programming is achieved in Scala. Also, Scala defines a simple and easy way to define anonymous functions (functions without names). It also supports higher-order functions and it allows nested functions. The syntax of these concepts will be explained in deeper details in the coming chapters.

  Also, it helps you to code in an immutable way, and by this, you can easily apply it to parallelism with synchronization and concurrency.

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  Scala is statically typed

  Unlike the other statically typed languages like Pascal, Rust, and so on, Scala does not expect you to provide redundant type information. You don't have to specify the type in most cases. Most importantly, you don't even need to repeat them again.

  A programming language is called statically typed if the type of a variable is known at compile time: this also means that, as a programmer, you must specify what the type of each variable is. For example, Scala, Java, C, OCaml, Haskell, and C++, and so on. On the other hand, Perl, Ruby, Python, and so on are dynamically typed languages, where the type is not associated with the variables or fields, but with the runtime values.

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  eBook - PDF

  Mastering Scala

  A Beginner's Guide

  • Sufyan bin Uzayr(Author)
  • 2025(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  • Scala’s developments include tuples, macros, and functions. • It includes object-oriented and functional programming, which makes it a potent programming language. • It is very scalable and hence offers superior support for backend activities. • It mitigates the greater risk associated with Java’s thread safety. • The functional approach typically results in fewer lines of code and defects, leading to increased productivity and quality. • Scala computes expressions only when the program needs them due to lazy evaluation. • Scala lacks both static methods and variables. It employs the unique object (class with one object in the source file). • It also includes the idea of traits. The collection of abstract and non- abstract methods that may compile into Java interfaces is known as a trait. DISADVANTAGES • Occasionally, two techniques make Scala challenging to comprehend. • Comparatively, there are fewer Scala developers available than Java developers. Scala Overview ◾ 11 • As it runs on JVM, it has no true-tail recursive optimization. • Scala is an object-oriented computer program where each function is a value and each value is an object. APPLICATIONS • It is mainly used for data analysis using spark. • Utilized in the development of web apps and API. • It facilitates the development of frameworks and libraries. • Preferred for usage in backend processes to increase developer efficiency. • Scala may use for parallel batch processing. AN INTRIGUING FACT ABOUT SCALA Scala (pronounced “skah-lah”) is a computer language created by Martin Odersky. Scala’s development began in 2001 at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Scala was first made public in 2004 on the Java platform. Scala is intended to be brief and solves Java’s shortcomings. Scala source code is converted to Java byte code, then executed on a JVM 2.12.8, which is the most recent version. • Name: Scala is an abbreviation for Scalable Language. • A Hybrid Language: A Mixed Language: Scala is an OOP and FP hybrid.

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  Introduction to JVM Languages

  • Vincent van der Leun(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Packt Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Scala

  Scala is a unique language. It has strong support for functional programming and is also a pure object-oriented programming (OOP) language at the same time. We will cover both OOP and functional programming in this chapter.

  The Scala installation offers two ways of running Scala code. It offers an interactive shell where the code can be directly entered and run right away. This program can also be used to run Scala's source code directly, without manually compiling it first. Also, it offers scalac, a traditional compiler that compiles Scala's source code to Java bytecode and generates files with the .class extension. This chapter will only focus on the first method; the next chapter will cover the scalac compiler.

  Scala comes with its own Scala standard library. It complements the Java Class Library that is bundled with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE ) and installed as part of the Java Development Kit (JDK ). Scala's standard library contains classes that are optimized to work with Scala's language features. Among many other things, it implements its own collection classes and still offers compatibility with Java's collections.

  These are the topics that we will discuss in this chapter:

  • Installing Scala
  • Scala's Read-Eval-Print-Loop shell
  • Functional versus imperative programming
  • Scala language syntax and rules
  • OOP in Scala
  • Scala's standard library
  • Functional programming in Scala

  Many concepts used in this chapter are covered in detail in the previous chapters, particularly in Chapter 3 , Java . We recommend that you read that chapter first before you start with this.

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  Installing Scala

  From the official Scala site, download the latest version:

  Scala is distributed for many different operating systems. While you can download an archive (ZIP file for Windows or a .tgz file for Linux and macOS) and install everything manually, automatic installation packages for popular operating systems are available as well.

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  Object-Orientation, Abstraction, and Data Structures Using Scala

  • Mark C. Lewis, Lisa L. Lacher(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Chapman and Hall/CRC

    (Publisher)

  This chapter is intended to get you up to speed on the basic syntax and semantics of the Scala language. If you have previous experience with Scala, this can be a refresher. If your previous experience is in some other language, this chapter will help introduce you to the key concepts that you need to use in later chapters. Programming languages are generally classified by different paradigm s. A paradigm is an approach that a language takes to organizing code and solving problems. The four main paradigms of programming are imperative , functional , object-oriented , and logic . Scala is generally described as both functional and object-oriented, but it is not strictly functional, as it allows the imperative style as well. This combining of paradigms is becoming more common, and even older languages, like Java and Python, have gained features that also allow them to use aspects of all three of these paradigms. In Scala, one 1 2 Object-Orientation, Abstraction, and Data Structures Using Scala often prefers more functional approaches, while languages like Java and Python are naturally imperative with functional features. Through the course of this book, and hopefully later in your education, the meanings of these terms and the features of the various paradigms will become clearer. The discussion in this book will generally explicitly say whether code is written in a way that is more functional or more imperative, and everything in Scala is fundamentally object-oriented. 1.1 First Application In this book, we are writing our programs as applications in Scala. If you happened to use Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving Using Scala [9] previously, most of that book used the REPL and the scripting environment. Applications were only introduced at the very end of that book. Here they will be the standard, though simple expressions can be entered and tested using the REPL as well.

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  eBook - ePub

  Object-Orientation, Abstraction, and Data Structures Using Scala

  • Mark C. Lewis, Lisa Lacher, Lisa L. Lacher(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Chapman and Hall/CRC

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  Scala language Basics

  1.1    First Application 1.2    Comments 1.3    Variables and Types 1.4    Statements and Expressions 1.4.1    Lambda Expressions/Closures 1.5    Control Structures 1.5.1    Conditionals 1.5.2    Loops 1.5.3    Error Handling 1.6    Declarations and Scope 1.7    Essential Libraries

  1.7.1    Standard Input and import Statements

  1.7.2    Basic Collections

  1.7.2.1    Array and List

  1.7.2.2    Creating Collections Using fill

  1.7.2.3    Creating Collections Using tabulate

  1.7.2.4    Creating Array s Using new

  1.7.2.5    Creating List s Using Cons

  1.7.2.6    Range

  1.7.2.7    Methods 1.7.2.8    Higher-Order Methods

  1.7.3    The Option Type

  1.7.4    Text Files 1.8    Other Language Features 1.8.1    Unfinished Code 1.8.2    Named Arguments 1.8.3    Default Parameter Values 1.8.4    Curried Functions/Methods 1.8.5    Pass-by-Name 1.9    The Read, Evaluate, Print Loop (REPL) 1.10  Putting It Together 1.11  End of Chapter Material 1.11.1  Summary of Concepts 1.11.2  Exercises  

  This book assumes that you have previous programming experience, though perhaps not with Scala. This chapter is intended to get you up to speed on the basic syntax and semantics of the Scala language. If you have previous experience with Scala, this can be a refresher. If your previous experience is in some other language, this chapter will help introduce you to the key concepts that you need to use in later chapters.

  Programming languages are generally classified by different PARADIGMS. A paradigm is an approach that a language takes to organizing code and solving problems. The four main paradigms of programming are IMPERATIVE, FUNCTIONAL, OBJECT-ORIENTED , and LOGIC

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