What is Scala and why it is so important?

Okay hi everyone and welcome to this new blog so this blog is about Scala the up-and-coming programming language now while it's not very true that it's up-and-coming because it was actually developed in 2003 it has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years and many developers across different industries are keen to learn it and learn more about it so to get started what is Scala. so it's a general-purpose programming language so the same as Java and Python these are general-purpose languages it was invented by Mr. Martin Erskine and his research team at EPFL in Switzerland in 2003 so like I said developed in 2003 however, it has been gaining popularity in recent years and many say that the term Scala itself represents a scalable language or scaleable itself.

So because it's a highly scalable language and we'll get into it in a minute now Scala is said to be a multi-paradigm language now what are programming paradigms so paradigms are essentially like a set of principles that we follow for a certain language so this is how we do things in this language this is how we do things in this paradigm so this is how we do things in object-oriented or in functional programming so it's a series of steps or principles that we must follow in each paradigm.

So Scala is multi-paradigm like we said what does that means it brings together object-oriented programming and functional programming so object-oriented like Java for example we have these objects these variables in Scala are all saved as objects so this is what makes it a powerful object-oriented programming tool however it also provides functional programming and it works in that way making it really easy for us to move the two together without having to combine different languages and it's all into one concise programming language okay so another feature of Scala is that it is statically typed so we know that it could things could be either statically or dynamically typed now variable types in Scala explicitly declared unknown at compile-time so just ask any statically the typed language you have to declare each variable what it is so what type or what type of object it is and the compiler at compile time it would know meanwhile in dynamic dynamically typed languages.

We do not declare them and that is sort of interpreted at and at runtime so dynamic typing is slower so that's why we say that Python is a a slow language that's why we have Scala now because it has this faster functionality while still being better then the normal object-oriented languages such as Java it brings in the good parts of Python but makes it fast so that's a really good Pro for Scala and that's why it has been gaining such popularity so this is why we like it because it is statically typed it makes catching errors much easier because we can catch them at compile time rather then have to debug things at one time so Scala runs on JVM JVM is the java a virtual machine so it has his Java Runtime making it compatible with existing Java programs so it initially was born because it seeks to address all the issues of Java so Scala was just the a better job of the same way Cartman who is also introduced to be a better Java so you can use color with existing Java code and you can use color for Android apps as well because we know that Java is used for Android so when you have an Android app and it requires some sort of functional programming that Java does not provide you you can go for Scala and that would be a good idea.

So what is Scala is so I'm not sure why this form is so tiny but so skeletal j/s is a scanner a compiler that compiles to JavaScript making it possible to write Scala programs that run in web browsers so or with nodejs so it's the JavaScript version of Scala and it also has been gaining a lot of popularity so it's relatively much newer than the actual normal Scala and in recent years this has been really looked into and researched so developers are very interested in that we can keep an eye out for it if you're interested in web development so another industry where we can use Scala is data science so it's a staple language at this point for data science so you have Python you have R and now you have Scala alongside them and the main difference here the main the reason we have a scholar with these already very powerful data science languages are that Scala is great for big data analysis so we're talking huge volumes of data it has a framework called Apache spark.

Which you can use with scallop to have a big data analysis and run your analysis extensively large volumes of data because it's highly scalable like we said like the name so for data science, it's huge plus it's something you should definitely go for it if you're in this industry why Scala so why should you learn Scala it's very? concise and readable so you have learned it reading the code is very so it's the same reason that made Python so popular and another language is because they were relatively simpler to read it's multi-paradigm like we said it's good for parallel tasks it's it has multiple frameworks that are very useful for different applications like we said Apaches work for big data analysis and just to kind of summarize the applications of scalar and what where it could be used so Scala is being used by numerous tech companies Netflix Twitter Linkedin Airbnb I even heard that Apple was using it and in a sense.

it's also very popular in data science and data engineering like we said so if you're interested in this type of thing if you're interested at we're in working at these big companies if you want to use it for the back-end if you wanna use it for a web if you want to use it for data science and engineering big data that's your call so this is where if you can see that Scylla fits into your industry if its applications match your interests then you should probably go for it and learn it so finally should you learn it so like I said if it matches your industry if it's popular in you're in this then it would not hurt to add it to your tool belt.

However you must know that it has a steep learning curve especially for absolute beginners so if you're coming in and you're not an amazing program not even amazing so you're not an the intermediate level programmer you're gonna have some trouble understanding it especially if you're not already familiar with a language like Java or C so if you've only ever worked with basic Python and you come to Scala there's gonna be a lot that you're gonna be confused about it so if you know Java go for it because it's going to be quite easy for you to transition to this language however if you're a beginner I suggest learning Java first or maybe it's just dabbling in it a bit getting to know the syntax of things how classes and objects work and then moving onto Scala and like we said finally that if you're in the data engineering industry then it's a good choice to learn it so I hope this was useful I hope you were able to have some insight on whether or not you should learn this language I hope you were able to understand what makes this language so popular and so important in recent years.