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I briefly looked at Scala 9 years ago. Where does one begin these days? My books are outdated? Someone mentioned looking at Cats: https://typelevel.org/cats

I briefly looked at Scala 9 years ago. Where does one begin these days? My books are outdated? Someone mentioned looking at Cats: https://typelevel.org/cats/ https://typelevel.org/cats/

spir 7y ago
Scala 3 launches in 2020 after a new compiler was written over a five year period. The new compiler is named "Dotty". A Tour of Scala 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rnrx2lo9cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rnrx2lo9cw Also, GraalVM's ahead of time compilation is somewhat of a competitor to Scala native https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilation/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilatio... Cat is great, this book is too http://underscore.io/books/scala-with-cats/ http://underscore.io/books/scala-with-cats/
- pjmlp 7y ago
  GraalVM's ahead of time compilation is not the sole competitor, most commercial JDKs do offer some kind of AOT support.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Yes, you often mention them, but nobody [1] uses those, whereas GraalVM, due to coming Oracle and eventually being some kind of default (itself, not the AOT option per se), might do better. [1] Where nobody = roughly as many people use CL/Haskell in production, and in any case, not any number to write home about...
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Apparently they have been in business since 2000's. It bet that they have much more deployments in production than CL/Haskell, given the embedded space.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Probably, just wanting to take a jab at you :-) My point really being that, yeah, JVM-AOT existed since forever, but they have always been niche in the grand scheme of things (especially since you need a commercial license for most, and in this industry, after 2000, that's almost a death kiss). If Sun had bundled the same option and made it easy to use, it would be a whole different story.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Yeah the typical wanted to be payed, but not wanting to pay for the work of others. Thankfully corporations business levels works a bit differently, hence the rise of dual licenses.
dwohnitmok 7y ago
I would not recommend looking at Cats without prior Scala experience unless you already have prior experience with a statically typed functional language (such as an ML or Haskell). Almost all educational material for Cats assumes at least a basic familiarity with Scala. Any of the books here will be fine: https://docs.scala-lang.org/books.html https://docs.scala-lang.org/books.html. A few are a bit old, but they all get the job done. There's a lack of good coverage for Scala 2.13 (the most recent version), but 2.13 is more or less compatible with 2.11 and 2.12. Its only big change is the collections library, but luckily 2.13's collections library is far simpler than 2.11 and 2.12's and its usage is mostly source compatible. So if you're learning Scala from a 2.12 or 2.11 book and want to make sure you're fine for 2.13, just don't try to understand any complicated CanBuildFrom machinery (which you never really needed to know for 2.11 and 2.12) and just trust that 2.13 has a much simpler approach.
vturner 7y ago
Does anyone think the coursera courses are worth it? I signed up and am working through them in my free time.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  I took Martin’s Scala class years ago and it was awesome. He is a great lecturer.
- acjohnson55 7y ago
  I loved it years ago. To date, it's the only Coursera course I completed.
cheriot 7y ago
These two are the most recommended where I work: https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scala https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scal... https://leanpub.com/fpmortals/read https://leanpub.com/fpmortals/read

I briefly looked at Scala 9 years ago. Where does one begin these days? My books are outdated? Someone mentioned looking at Cats: https://typelevel.org/cats/ https://typelevel.org/cats/

spir 7y ago

Scala 3 launches in 2020 after a new compiler was written over a five year period. The new compiler is named "Dotty". A Tour of Scala 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rnrx2lo9cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rnrx2lo9cw Also, GraalVM's ahead of time compilation is somewhat of a competitor to Scala native https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilation/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilatio... Cat is great, this book is too http://underscore.io/books/scala-with-cats/ http://underscore.io/books/scala-with-cats/

pjmlp 7y ago
GraalVM's ahead of time compilation is not the sole competitor, most commercial JDKs do offer some kind of AOT support.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Yes, you often mention them, but nobody [1] uses those, whereas GraalVM, due to coming Oracle and eventually being some kind of default (itself, not the AOT option per se), might do better. [1] Where nobody = roughly as many people use CL/Haskell in production, and in any case, not any number to write home about...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Apparently they have been in business since 2000's. It bet that they have much more deployments in production than CL/Haskell, given the embedded space.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Probably, just wanting to take a jab at you :-) My point really being that, yeah, JVM-AOT existed since forever, but they have always been niche in the grand scheme of things (especially since you need a commercial license for most, and in this industry, after 2000, that's almost a death kiss). If Sun had bundled the same option and made it easy to use, it would be a whole different story.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Yeah the typical wanted to be payed, but not wanting to pay for the work of others. Thankfully corporations business levels works a bit differently, hence the rise of dual licenses.

dwohnitmok 7y ago

I would not recommend looking at Cats without prior Scala experience unless you already have prior experience with a statically typed functional language (such as an ML or Haskell). Almost all educational material for Cats assumes at least a basic familiarity with Scala. Any of the books here will be fine: https://docs.scala-lang.org/books.html https://docs.scala-lang.org/books.html. A few are a bit old, but they all get the job done. There's a lack of good coverage for Scala 2.13 (the most recent version), but 2.13 is more or less compatible with 2.11 and 2.12. Its only big change is the collections library, but luckily 2.13's collections library is far simpler than 2.11 and 2.12's and its usage is mostly source compatible. So if you're learning Scala from a 2.12 or 2.11 book and want to make sure you're fine for 2.13, just don't try to understand any complicated CanBuildFrom machinery (which you never really needed to know for 2.11 and 2.12) and just trust that 2.13 has a much simpler approach.

vturner 7y ago

Does anyone think the coursera courses are worth it? I signed up and am working through them in my free time.

mark_l_watson 7y ago
I took Martin’s Scala class years ago and it was awesome. He is a great lecturer.
acjohnson55 7y ago
I loved it years ago. To date, it's the only Coursera course I completed.

cheriot 7y ago

These two are the most recommended where I work: https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scala https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scal... https://leanpub.com/fpmortals/read https://leanpub.com/fpmortals/read