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

Concurrent programming


It's a programming approach where a set of computations can be performed simultaneously. These set of computations might share the same resources such as memory. How's it different from sequential programming? In sequential programming, every computation can be performed one after another. In the case of concurrent programs, more than one computation can be performed in the same time period.

By executing multiple computations, we can perform multiple logical operations in the program at the same time, resulting in better performance. Programs can run faster than before. This may sound cool; concurrency actually makes implementing real scenarios easier. Think about an internet browser; we can stream our favorite videos and download some content at the same time. The download thread does not affect the streaming of the video in any way. This is possible because content download and video streams on a browser tab are separate logical program parts, and hence can run simultaneously...