Apache Spark allows you to write applications in Python, R, Java, or Scala. With this flexibility comes the responsibility of choosing the right language for your requirements. But regardless of your usual language of choice, you may want to consider Scala for your Spark-powered application. In this section, we will explain why.

Let's digress to gain a high-level understanding of imperative and functional programming paradigms first. Languages such as C, Python, and Java belong to the imperative programming paradigm. In the imperative programming paradigm, a program is a sequence of instructions and it has a program state. The program state is usually represented as a set of variables and their values at any given point in time. Assignments and reassignments are fairly common. Variable values are expected to change over the period of execution by one or more functions. Variable value modification in a function is not limited to local variables. Global variables and public...