Course Overview Scala is a general-purpose programming language. It has full support for functional programming and a very strong static type system. Designed to be concise, many of Scala's design decisions were inspired by criticism of Java's shortcomings. Scala source code is intended to be compiled to Java bytecode, so that the resulting executable code runs on a Java virtual machine. Java libraries may be used directly in Scala code and vice versa (language interoperability). Like Java, Scala is object-oriented, and uses a curly-brace syntax reminiscent of the C programming language. Unlike Java, Scala has many features of functional programming languages like Scheme, Standard ML and Haskell, including currying, type inference, immutability, lazy evaluation, and pattern matching. It also has an advanced type system supporting algebraic data types, covariance and contravariance, higher-order types (but not higher-rank types), and anonymous types. Other features of Scala not present in Java include operator overloading, optional parameters, named parameters, raw strings, and no checked exceptions. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_(programming_language)) In this course, we provide a framework and toolset so that you can develop modern Scala applications. We cover a wide range of topics, from SBT build and reactive applications, to testing and database access. With our straightforward tutorials, you will be able to get your own projects up and running in minimum time. Author Overview Andriy completed his Master Degree in Computer Science at Zhitomir Institute of Engineering and Technologies, Ukraine. For the last fifteen years he has been working as the Consultant/Software Developer/Senior Software Developer/Team Lead for a many successful projects including several huge software systems for customers from North America and Europe. Through his career Andriy has gained a great experience in enterprise architecture, web development (ASP.NET, Java Server Faces, Play Framework), software development practices (test-driven development, continious integration) and software platforms (Sun JEE, Microsoft .NET), object-oriented analysis and design, development of the rich user interfaces (MFC, Swing, Windows Forms/WPF), relational database management systems (MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle), NoSQL solutions (MongoDB, Redis) and operating systems (Linux/Windows). Andriy has a great experience in development of distributed (multi-tier) software systems, multi-threaded applications, desktop applications, service-oriented architecture and rich Internet applications. Since 2006 he is actively working primarily with JEE / JSE platforms. As a professional he is always open to continuous learning and self-improvement to be more productive in the job he is really passioned about. Lessons Build with SBT For many experienced Java developers, Scala programming language is not a stranger. It’s been around for quite a while now (officially, since first public release in 2004) and gained quite a lot of traction in the recent years.There are many reasons why one is going to pick Scala over Java, Clojure, Groovy, Kotlin, Ceylon, … and we are not going to discuss that in this tutorial. However, what we are going to talk about is the ecosystem of tools, frameworks and libraries which Scala community has developed over the years to provide a native Scala experience for the developers. Testing In this section of the tutorial we are going to talk about testing frameworks which are widely adopted by majority of the Scala application developers. Although the hot debates around effectiveness and usefulness of the test-driven development(or just TDD) practices are going on for years, this section is based on a true belief that tests are great thing which makes us better software developers and improves the quality and maintainability of the software systems we have worked or are working on. Reactive Applications In the last couple of years many software systems, used by millions and even billions of people every day, have started to face unprecedented scalability requirements. In many regard the traditional software architectures were pushed to its limits, unveiling the urgent need to come up with other architectural styles which better suit the demands of the modern world.This was the moment where another paradigm, reactive programming, has started to emerge and widespread very fast. Database Access with Slick We are certainly leaving at the epoch of flourishing data stores. Myriads of NoSQL and NewSQL solutions have emerged over the last couple of years, and even these days the new ones are popping up here and there from time to time. Nonetheless, long-time players in the form of relational database are still being used in the vast majority of software systems. Bullet-proof and battle-tested, they are number one choice for storing critical to business data. Console Applications Needless to say that Web and mobile have penetrated very deeply into our lives, affecting a lot our day to day habits and expectations about things. As such, overwhelming majority of the applications being developed these days are either mobile apps, or web APIs or full-fledged web sites and portals. Classic, old style, console-based applications have largely faded away. They are living their lives primarily on Linux / Unix operating systems, being at the core of their philosophies. Concurrency and parallelism with Akka It would be fair to say that the epoch of computers with single CPU (or just one core) has mostly become a forgotten history these days. Now, most of the devices, no matter how small are they, have been built using multi-core CPU architectures aimed to increase the overall computational power. Such advances and innovations on hardware front forced us to rethink the approaches of how to develop and run software systems in order to effectively utilize all available resources. Web Applications with Play Framework It is been a long time since Web became a dominant, universally and globally accessible platform for myriad of different applications: either web sites, web portals, or web APIs. Started as a simple set of static HTML pages, web applications in leaps and bounds were catching up with their desktop counterparts, transforming into new class of what we used to call rich Internet applications (or just RIA). Web APIs with Akka HTTP In the today’s web, HTTP is the king. Over the years many different attempts have been made to come up with standard, uniform high-level protocol to expose services over it. SOAP was probably the first one which gained widespread popularity (particularly in enterprise world) and served as de-facto specification for web services and APIs development for number of years. However, its verbosity and formalism often served as a source of additional complexity and that is one of the reasons for Representational state transfer (or just REST) to emerge. Make sure to retweet this, let your social followers know! https://twitter.com/javacodegeeks/status/795635676859404290
Andrey RedkoNovember 7th, 2016Last Updated: December 8th, 2023
