Book Image

Learning Scala Programming

By : Vikash Sharma
Book Image

Learning Scala Programming

By: Vikash Sharma

Overview of this book

Scala is a general-purpose programming language that supports both functional and object-oriented programming paradigms. Due to its concise design and versatility, Scala's applications have been extended to a wide variety of fields such as data science and cluster computing. You will learn to write highly scalable, concurrent, and testable programs to meet everyday software requirements. We will begin by understanding the language basics, syntax, core data types, literals, variables, and more. From here you will be introduced to data structures with Scala and you will learn to work with higher-order functions. Scala's powerful collections framework will help you get the best out of immutable data structures and utilize them effectively. You will then be introduced to concepts such as pattern matching, case classes, and functional programming features. From here, you will learn to work with Scala's object-oriented features. Going forward, you will learn about asynchronous and reactive programming with Scala, where you will be introduced to the Akka framework. Finally, you will learn the interoperability of Scala and Java. After reading this book, you'll be well versed with this language and its features, and you will be able to write scalable, concurrent, and reactive programs in Scala.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Abstract classes


We can define abstract classes using the abstract keyword:

abstract class Person 
class Customer extends Person 
class Employee extends Person 

Here, what we wanted was two subclasses that can also be treated as instances of a superclass, in our case, Person. For now, we have not shown any behavior in our abstract class. But, there are times when we want to imply some behaviors in our abstract classes that subsequent subclasses can inherit and define for themselves:

abstract class Person(category: String) { 
  val idPrefix: String 
} 
 
class Customer extends Person("External") { 
  override val idPrefix: String = "CUST" 
} 
 
class Employee extends Person("Internal") { 
  override val idPrefix: String = "EMP" 
} 

Our intention to use abstract classes is clearer now. We may want a set of classes that inherit methods or values from a particular class. When we extend classes, we can use the override modifier in our definition. This kind of behavior is likely to present itself...