Book Image

Introduction to JVM Languages

Book Image

Introduction to JVM Languages

Overview of this book

Anyone who knows software development knows about the Java Virtual Machine. The Java Virtual Machine is responsible for interpreting Java byte code and translating it into actions. In the beginning, Java was the only programming language used for the JVM. But increasing complexity of the language and the remarkable performance of the JVM created an opening for a new generation of programming languages. If you want to build a strong foundation with the Java Virtual Machine and get started with popular modern programming languages, then this book is for you. The book will begin with a general introduction of the JVM and its features, which are common to the JVM languages, helping you get abreast with its concepts. It will then dive into explaining languages such as Java, Scala, Clojure, Kotlin, and Groovy and will show how to work with each language, their features, use cases, and pros and cons. By writing example projects in those languages and focusing on each language’s strong points, it will help you find the programming language that is most appropriate for your particular needs. By the end of the book, you will have written multiple programs that run on the Java Virtual Machine and know about the differences between the various languages.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Creating an Akka project


Akka is a modular toolkit for creating robust, distributed applications. It works with the Actor model, which will be explained in more depth later, and makes great use of Scala's functional programming features. It's a huge library, so we can only demonstrate a small portion of it in this chapter.

Visit the Akka website for more information (http://akka.io/).

It is recommended that you have Akka documentation at your fingertips while creating this project. Visit http://akka.io/docs/ for more information on Akka documentation.

We will cover the following topics in this section:

  • Adding Akka dependencies to the SBT build file
  • Updating the Scala IDE project
  • Akka concepts
  • Creating actors
  • Creating messages
  • Unit testing an actor using the ScalaTest library
  • Writing a runnable application

Adding an Akka dependency to the SBT build file

In the main Akka documentation site, find the sbt section:

Find the akka-actor artifact in the list and copy the line to the clipboard:

    "com.typesafe...