Programming in Scala
Two weeks ago, I picked up my copy of Programming in Scala, which had been languishing on my shelf for months. I pre-purchased it since I went to high school with one of the authors (Lex Spoon). His mother, incidentally, was also my favorite math teacher. When I started my new job back in September 2008, I was a total noob at Ruby, so learning that consumed my attention and other languages took a back burner. Also, I’m always a little reluctant when it comes to learning new languages. Not because I don’t like to learn them or because it’s difficult — but because it’s a serious investment of time that may be totally wasted. Sure, Standard ML is an interesting language, but try finding a job doing it. When I heard that Twitter was using Scala, I figured the time has come to pick up this book. It also helped that a friend recently started an Atlanta Scala Meetup group.
Aside from being an update on my life, the point of this post is to say that this book is great. Seldom have I encountered a programming book that achieves this level of depth while still being fun to read. There are great examples with humor mixed in, the writing is clear and concise, and it’s thorough. What more could you want?
Has anyone else picked up Scala? (I know there’s a few of you out there lurking!) Are there any other good books you would recommend?
In the interest of full disclosure, though I know one of the authors, I haven’t actually talked to him in quite a long time (since high school, I think). I also don’t make any extra money aside from the Amazon affiliate program commission if you happen to buy anything on their site after clicking the book link.
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The related posts wordpress is giving for this post are awful.
Yes learning a programming language is time consuming but using commonalities between languages help a lot to speed learning. For example I’m learning Scala with the help of Rebol which has the most concise syntax on Earth :)
http://reboltutorial.com/scala
I saw your Scala post a little earlier and came across this in research on Ruby/Twitter: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/01/twitter_on_scala/
Yeah the fact that Twitter switched over in part is one of the reasons I became interested in Scala. I love that article’s tagline.
I tried to watch this Google video on Scala by Odersky: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=553859542692229789&ei=5RiCSrLZN8nylQeRnIy3DQ&q=scala&hl=en Couldn’t really get too far but perhaps one has to be in a certain mood for this – hope as you mention that the book is better. Been thinking again about implementations, permutations and implementation possibilities of Weizenbaum’s Eliza programming methodologies (Rogerian analysis). I wonder how this would be implemented in Scala or Ruby or possibilities of combining this with an Endeca type catalog. Recently got out Weizenbaum’s early book on the potential or lack of potential for AI “Computer Power and Human Reason (1976) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum Been thinking about this in light of much of the current discussion surrounding Ray Kurzweil, Singularity University and have recently ordered a documentary done on Weizenbaum before he died, Rebel at Work: http://www.ilmarefilm.org/W_E_4.htm
When I started learning Scala, I used the available docs in http://www.scala-lang.org. Now I have the book and is a lot better :)
Another book that may be interesting is “Programming Scala” (O’Reilly ). I’ve read a couple of chapters online and looks very good.
(The link for the book is: http://programming-scala.labs.oreilly.com/index.html)