Original review written by Roberto Bentivoglio, JUG Lugano www.juglugano.ch
Scala is a recent programming language that mixes the object-oriented programming with the functional programming and DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages).
Programming Scala is a book written by Dean Wampler, consultant, trainer and mentor with Object Mentor, Inc. He specializes in Scala, Java and Ruby. The second author is Alex Payne. He has been working since the beginning of 2007 for the Twitter, Inc. as Platform Lead. Knowing that Scala is the platform used to develop Twitter, one of the most worldwide used social network, the book becomes very promising.
The first thing to know before studying this language is that it needs a relatively long time to be deeply understood. Scala presents some difference that, at the begin, can be heavy to digest to Java developer.
Scala is introduced in the first chapter as a language that addresses the major needs of the modern developer. To explain the power of Scala the authors compare it with the most popular programming languages: Java, C#, Ruby, Python, PHP, etc. After a fast explanation on how to install the Scala environment the authors show the usual Hello World program code.
In the subsequent chapters are explained all the concepts at the base of the Scala programming language: its syntax, the traits, its object-oriented and functional programming, the concurrency with the actors, DSLs, the Type system and a very interesting chapter about the application design with Scala. The last chapter covers the tools, the libraries and the IDE support for Scala.
The book contains many (working) examples that are very useful to learn the Scala structure. The language used by the authors is not complicated and helps to easily understand theirs explanations. One of the major hallmarks of the book is that the authors try to use the Scala syntax that they consider the best from the first examples. This feature of the book can help to learn from the begin what they think is the best way to programming in Scala. On the other hand, for newbies it can turn out to be difficult to understand why it's better to use some structure or some syntax instead of others.
Despite this feature, the final consideration is that "Programming Scala" is a good work and it's one of the best ways and one of the best books to enter in the wonderful Scala world.