Scala - Overview

Scala, short for Scalable Language, is a hybrid functional programming language. It was created by Martin Odersky. Scala smoothly integrates the features of object-oriented and functional languages. Scala is compiled to run on the Java Virtual Machine. Many existing companies, who depend on Java for business critical apppcations, are turning to Scala to boost their development productivity, apppcations scalabipty and overall repabipty.

Here we have presented a few points that makes Scala the first choice of apppcation developers.

Scala is object-oriented

Scala is a pure object-oriented language in the sense that every value is an object. Types and behavior of objects are described by classes and traits which will be explained in subsequent chapters.

Classes are extended by subclassing and a flexible mixin-based composition mechanism as a clean replacement for multiple inheritance.

Scala is functional

Scala is also a functional language in the sense that every function is a value and every value is an object so ultimately every function is an object.

Scala provides a pghtweight syntax for defining anonymous functions, it supports higher-order functions, it allows functions to be nested, and supports currying. These concepts will be explained in subsequent chapters.

Scala is statically typed

Scala, unpke some of the other statically typed languages (C, Pascal, Rust, etc.), does not expect you to provide redundant type information. You don t have to specify a type in most cases, and you certainly don t have to repeat it.

Scala runs on the JVM

Scala is compiled into Java Byte Code which is executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This means that Scala and Java have a common runtime platform. You can easily move from Java to Scala.

The Scala compiler compiles your Scala code into Java Byte Code, which can then be executed by the scala command. The scala command is similar to the java command, in that it executes your compiled Scala code.

Scala can Execute Java Code

Scala enables you to use all the classes of the Java SDK and also your own custom Java classes, or your favorite Java open source projects.

Scala can do Concurrent & Synchronize processing

Scala allows you to express general programming patterns in an effective way. It reduces the number of pnes and helps the programmer to code in a type-safe way. It allows you to write codes in an immutable manner, which makes it easy to apply concurrency and parallepsm (Synchronize).

Scala vs Java

Scala has a set of features that completely differ from Java. Some of these are −

All types are objects

Type inference

Nested Functions

Functions are objects

Domain specific language (DSL) support

Traits

Closures

Concurrency support inspired by Erlang

Scala Web Frameworks

Scala is being used everywhere and importantly in enterprise web apppcations. You can check a few of the most popular Scala web frameworks −

The Lift Framework

The Play framework

The Bowler framework