Book Image

Scala Programming Projects

By : Mikael Valot, Nicolas Jorand
Book Image

Scala Programming Projects

By: Mikael Valot, Nicolas Jorand

Overview of this book

Scala Programming Projects is a comprehensive project-based introduction for those who are new to Scala. Complete with step-by-step instructions and easy-to-follow tutorials that demonstrate best practices when building applications, this Scala book will have you building real-world projects in no time. Starting with the fundamentals of software development, you’ll begin with simple projects, such as developing a financial independence calculator, and then advance to more complex projects, such as a building a shopping application and a Bitcoin transaction analyzer. You’ll explore a variety of Scala features, including its OOP and FP capabilities, and learn how to write concise, reactive, and concurrent applications in a type-safe manner. You’ll also understand how to use libraries such as Akka and Play. Furthermore, you’ll be able to integrate your Scala apps with Kafka, Spark, and Zeppelin, along with deploying applications on a cloud platform. By the end of the book, you’ll have a firm foundation in Java programming that’ll enable you to solve a variety of real-world problems, and you’ll have built impressive projects to add to your professional portfolio.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 4. Advanced Features

In this chapter, we are going to explore the more advanced features of Scala. As with any programming language, some advanced constructs might be seldom used in practice or can obfuscate code.

We will aim to only explain features that we have encountered in real projects that have been deployed to production. Some features are used more in libraries or in the SDK than in a typical project, but it is important to understand them in order to be able to use a library effectively.

As these features are varied and cover a large spectrum, we found it easier to explain them using ad hoc code examples rather than a complete project. You can, therefore, jump directly to any section of this chapter if you are already familiar with some of these concepts.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Strictness and laziness, and their impact on performance
  • Covariance and contravariance
  • Currying and partially applied functions
  • Implicit usage