Somewhere in the last few months, I decided to learn Scala. And master it. There are several reasons to do this, but a couple of them is enough for me:
- The desire to learn something new, different. Java is nice, I love it. But I want to learn new ways to do things; I want to open my mind to new ideas and possibilities;
- The urge to be more productive, to be able to spend more time on what matters, and less on boilerplate code. Ruby on Rails is one big inspiration here, but I want something more focused on the Java platform.
So, after discovering about the existence of Scala through one of the Java Posse episodes, this was the language I decided is going to be my next big step in terms of software development.
I still have a LOT to learn. I am just a baby when it comes to Scala. But a few things already hit me. One of those is that Scala source code may seem alien at first. For example, instead of declaring variables like this:
Integer count = 10;
you would do this:
val count: Int = 10
There are a few interesting things about this code:
- semi-colons are optional;
- the type definition comes after the variable name, instead of before;
- the type definition is optional in this case: you know 10 is an integer, right? The Scala compiler knows that as well.
I’ll be posting more about Scala as my learning progresses, so stay tuned! Any expectations? Leave a comment!
JCranky 
I’ll be happy to ready more about Scala. But in the other hand I feel sorry you didn’t give Ruby a try. =)
Cheers!
Well, my problem with Ruby is that it is not built from scratch for running on top of the JVM. Its more of a philosophical reason than anything, but anyway… 😉
Also note that
val count: Int = 10
can be shortened to
val count = 10
The type inferencing system deduces that count variable is of type Int because it is initialized with an integer. So declarations can be as concise as in a dynamically typed language like Ruby, but you still get the static typing (and compiling to efficient bytecode using the native types and not using reflection).
Eamonn, that is what I meant when I said “the type definition is optional”. Maybe I should have been less lazy and put and example hehehe
Thank you for your comment! =)
Interesting.
I don’t know why, but i didn’t like the optional semi-colons. I prefer always put it.
Would be nice have more tips about Scala.
[]’s
I didn’t like the optional semi-colons as well at first. The code seemed just too… clean! But then it hits you that actually this is a good thing! hehehe =)
And there will be more Scala related posts! Actually, I plan to have a lot of them! =)
Excellent site, keep up the good work
thank you! =)