Learning a new language also means getting acquainted with a new ecosystem of frameworks and tools. The good news is, in Scala, we can largely inherit the very rich and mature set of available tools and libraries from Java. In this chapter, we are going to cover the major novelties and additions to the existing ecosystem that we, as Java developers, are already familiar with.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Code editing environments—also known as IDEs
SBT—a tool specific to Scala to build, test, and execute code
Utilities as plugins to SBT to integrate with the Java ecosystem
Scala Worksheets—a novel approach to interactive programming
Working with HTTP and interacting with external web-based services, including the introduction of "for comprehensions"—a useful Scala construct
Typesafe Activator—a convenient tool to bootstrap projects quickly
Using Scala for scripting