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

Chapter 3. Shaping our Scala Program

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."

- C. A. R. Hoare

A program is a solution specific to a problem. The solution we write is broken down to different tasks. Tasks can be specific to a step or a part of the solution. While coding for such tasks, we use constructs as tools to make them easier, readable, and performant. These tools make it possible to shape up your program at hand.

To code for a task that is repetitive requires either a construct that can repeat a given logic for you, or write the same snippet of code by hand again and again. I bet the first one is far better and that's why we have a few constructs, we call them looping constructs. Scala supports for, while, and do while loops. We'll see how these loops work...