Category: scala

Ways to Learn a New Programming Language

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Every programmer should be learning a new programming language on a regular basis. That’s every three, six or twelve months. For me, I like to vary my languages by paradigm. Object Oriented Programming. Functional Programming. Declarative versus Imperative Programming. Compiled Languages versus Scripting Languages. Dynamic versus Static Programming languages. There are two reasons I want to learn new languages. One, I like to apply what I’ve learned from one paradigm and apply it to my current situation. Second, I like to stay up to date on the needs of the industry and be ready for whatever may come. Continue reading “Ways to Learn a New Programming Language” →

Taking on Machine Learning

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About two months ago I took steps to get into the Machine Learning bandwaggon. It was tough to take that first step for many reasons. The first was the tough decision of choosing the right programming language to learn. Did I want to stick to the JVM and Java or chose another JVM language? Take up Python. Or learn something else. This article from KDnuggets made that decision much harder. Luckily, due to circumstances from a recent project, I decided to turn to Scala. And so far, I haven’t been disappointed. Continue reading “Taking on Machine Learning” →

The Best Scala Programming Resources

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In the last few weeks that I’ve spent learning Scala I’ve discovered several amazing online resources. So much so that it made it difficult to justify purchasing a book, even though I did buy the much-recommended Programming in Scala title. Every time I needed help in figuring out how to do something, the following websites were indispensable.

Some of these sites are no longer active, but the information they provide is still very much relevant to new and experienced Scala programmers. Continue reading “The Best Scala Programming Resources” →

Four reasons to try Scala and love it

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I’ve been working a lot with Scala in the last few weeks. It is an amazing programming language, to say the least. It’s terse, intuitive, unambiguous. And a real treat when you want to do stuff. It’s the programming language of the future. If only it would get more support and momentum going for it. Plus, the quantity of online resources available is just mind boggling.

Below are my N reasons why Scala is the best JVM language. Continue reading “Four reasons to try Scala and love it” →

Why I decided to learn Scala

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I find that anything worth learning should be done by jumping in head first. Then find something halfway challenging and go to it. Hence, this is how I went about learning Scala. I’ve recently learned to program in Groovy to develop Spock based unit tests. Groovy was the first JVM language I learned outside of Java. And being pleasantly surprised, I decided to try my hand at Scala.

Why I Chose Scala

My reasoning for wanting to learn Scala is to get into artificial intelligence without straying away from the JVM. I have played around with Python which I really liked. But embarking on Python would take me into a whole new ecosystem. And although I would love to get involved in Python and its data science tools, I think that long term Scala may be the better option. Continue reading “Why I decided to learn Scala” →