Livan Frometa
6 Oct 2020
•
5 min read
Photo by Maximilian Weisbecker on Unsplash
Whether you are interested in gaining some skills in a new language or you are already professionally coding and want to take your career one step further, Scala is an excellent choice. It is perfect for introducing you to the exciting functional programming paradigm and community.
Scala joins functional programming and object-oriented programming into a powerful language. Scala’s complex features promote better coding and offer a performance increase. Here are some reasons why I recommend Scala.
Scala joins functional programming and object-oriented programming into a powerful language. Scala’s complex features promote better coding and offer a performance increase. Here are some reasons why I recommend Scala.
We can take advantage and benefit from the power of both paradigms. This is an easy-going way to transition compared with other purely functional languages. I prefer a trend towards the paradigm and the beautiful world of functional programming.
Immutable objects are simply objects whose state cannot change after construction. It can sound simple but in a big application, having the control of object build and the security that other components don’t change our initialization, can be a great feature to avoid bugs and solve problems faster.
We can use Scala to build powerful reactive, highly concurrent, fault-tolerant and distributed systems. Therefore, we can use the actor model of Akka, Monix, ZIO to name some among many.
Often, software engineers who want to become experts in these subjects(Big Data, Machine Learning). Scala can be a great choice for data analytics with support from tools like Apache Spark, among others.
Scala engineers with a business mindset are highly demanded profiles nowadays. Between the most common roles that the companies are looking for are: Backend Developers, Data Scientist, and Full Stack Developers. The Scala Developers are in the list of the best paid in various countries in the world(StackOverflow Developers Survey 2019), this is a great point to keep in mind when we have to choose a professional career.
The learning curve with the Scala language depends a lot on each personal context but in general, when you adopt advanced features on functional programming it is usually high. This is why my intention is to encourage you to continue improving yourself and learning new features every day. Everything will depend on your dedication. Here are some materials that were very helpful to me.
My recommendation to improve your coding skills with Scala is to read! Advanced books, articles and tutorials, etc. Do more courses online or on-site. Attend Scala conferences and meetups, such interaction can generate many quality discussions. Dive into your local meetups lineup and the worldwide conference’s list. Here, you have a list with a summary of different resources that can help you to learn a little bit more about Scala.
You will learn about Scala and the functional programming for sure if you get something out of the above list. And remember, the best way of learning programming is by practicing more programming.
Scala has a highly qualified and friendly community willing to discuss ideas and help new users. If you want to be up to date with all Scala news and content, you should add to your list the following mediums.
To end up, keep your current habits of how to learn and how you have learned other languages ​​and apply all this knowledge to Scala. I can tell you that functional programming is a really beautiful and interesting world.
I hope this article helps you to improve your Scala programming skills.
Livan Frometa
See other articles by Livan
Ground Floor, Verse Building, 18 Brunswick Place, London, N1 6DZ
108 E 16th Street, New York, NY 10003
Join over 111,000 others and get access to exclusive content, job opportunities and more!