Why Java Developers should learn Scala and Functional Programming in 2024
10 Reasons to learn Scala and Functional Programming for Java Programmers with resources
Hello folks, if you are Java Developer and want to learn Scala and Functional Programming in 2024 but not sure whether learning Scala is worth it or not then you have come to the right place.
Earlier, I have shared best Scala courses and books and today, I am going to share 10 Reasons to learn Scala and Functional Programming in 2024. Being a Java blogger, one of the questions my readers often ask me is, “Should Java developers learn ? Does Scala have a better future than ? Why should Java developers learn Scala,” and so on?
Well, there can be many reasons for learning Scala, like you are forced to learn it because it has been used in the new company you have just joined, or your solution architect decided to use it for the new project you are going to work, but that’s a different story.
Here, we’ll talk about the reasons that encourages Java developers to learn Scala.
Scala has emerged as one of the most powerful Java alternatives in recent times. It’s been the of choice, leaving and way behind, and is preferred as the language people want to write the most code in.
Scala has many strong points, the strongest being that it’s a multi-paradigm language.
Along with the superiority of functional programming idioms available to take advantage of multi-core CPU architectures, Scala has the right mix of the popular paradigm.
It not only solves many of Java’s issues, like less to no boilerplate, but it also provides several best practices and patterns right in the language, like immutability with the keyword and case classes.
Despite providing the fluency and flexibility of dynamic languages like , it’s still a strongly statically typed language to prevent you from doing bad things, which just happen at runtime in dynamic languages.
I am sure Scala developers will add many more reasons into this list, but being from a Java background and ardent supporter of Java, I think Scala definitely has something to offer, and the following reasons make a lot of sense for to learn Scala.
By the way, if you are already convinced that Scala is a great thing to learn and want to start now I highly recommend you check out course by Daniel Ciocîrlan on Udemy.
10 Reasons to learn Scala and Functional Programming in 2024
Without any further ado, here is my list of 10 reasons why a Java programmer should learn Scala and Functional Programming to become a better Software Developer and Engineer in 2024:
1. OOP and Functional Programming Capabilities
Scala is a bit different than Java, as it supports two programming paradigms: object-oriented programming () and functional programming ().
To advance your programming skills, it’s good to learn at least one language from different paradigms, like imperative, logical, functional, and OOP, and Scala gives you a chance to explore both functional and OOP together.
The book also advises you to learn a new programming language every year.
Scala allows you to define types associated with both data attributes (with classes behaving like / classes) and behavior attributes (with traits corresponding to Java interfaces).
Just like in other functional programming languages, In Scala, functions are first-class citizens (which means you can pass them around as values), and Scala also supports anonymous functions and currying (partial application of multi-argument functions).
This combination of features makes it possible to write Scala programs that are quite concise and elegant. Being multi-paradigm is one of the strongest selling points of Scala, which Java 8 has also attempted by introducing lambda expressions (see ), but it is still a couple of steps behind. I think Scala will always be more functional than Java, but that’s the topic of another debate.
2. Interoperability With Java
In my opinion, Scala’s choice of being interoperable with Java is the best thing to happen to Scala. runs on the Java Virtual Machine () and can interoperate nicely with Java code.
This also means Scala developers can use Java libraries directly from Scala code.
Given, many Java developers are turning to ; this is the perfect way of leveraging their years of experience in real-world Java programming.
It is also possible to call Scala code from Java, and you can easily write part of your program in Scala and the rest in Java.
In short, interoperability with gives Scala huge potential to become mainstream, enterprise programming language, as so much of the world’s code is written in Java, and so many developers are working in Java around the world. Btw, if you want to learn Java in-depth, I also suggest you check out on Udemy.
3. Best Practices and Patterns Built-In Language
One thing you might not know about Scala is that it was originally developed at the Swiss university EPFL in an attempt to apply recent innovations in programming language research to a language that can gain mainstream traction, much like Java.
Several best practices and patterns are built into the language itself, like val declares top-level , which is much better than the overloaded keyword in Java, or const/read-only in C# with the weird rules associated with it.
It also got case classes, which makes it easy to create immutable classes in Scala. Scala also offers closures, a feature that dynamic languages like and have adopted from the functional programming paradigm.
4. Expressiveness
When you compare Scala with Java as I did in my previous post about the , Scala certainly scores big over Java.
Scala is inherently very expressive. There’s also tons and tons of really beautiful and useful code written in Scala.
This is attracting more and more Java developers to learn Scala, who like to write beautiful and .
To give you an idea, here is the written in both Java and Scala, you can see the difference in the expressiveness of language by yourself.
Scala has achieved in just one line what Java has taken more than ten lines to achieve.
Scala code is more clear and concise
By the way, things can be improved on the Java side by using like and , which is not used in this example, but still, Scala scores big over Java when it comes to concise and clean code.
5. Marketable
What programmer doesn’t want to be marketable? One reason for learning a or framework is always a better job and career growth.
Learning Scala will certainly make you more marketable. Many companies are using or migrating to Scala these days, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Quora.
Given Scala’s marketing as Scalable language, the days are not far when the big investment banks and financial organizations will start looking Scala for their low-latency solutions.
Similar to the advice given in , Twitter has already shared best practices to develop programs in Scala as Effective Scala.
The founders of Quora spent a couple of months building a in order to use Scala.
Martin Odersky, the man behind Scala, is now behind the start-up , formally known as Typesafe, for supporting commercial Scala development.
Everything is going in the right direction for Scala to grow as the prime alternative to Java.
6. Statically Typed
In general, a statically typed language like Java prevents programmers from doing bad things, while, with a dynamic language like , you only know about a bad thing when you run the program.
Scala has the best of both worlds. It feels dynamic, but it’s strongly statically typed. The Scala compiler is really smart and uses type-inference to its fullest extent.
Scala provides type inference for variables and functions, much better than the limited type inference in and .
7. Growing Frameworks
One thing you might know about the ecosystem is that Scala is growing. There are lots of good libraries and frameworks coming around.
Companies that have started using are also contributing to the recent growth of Scala as a mainstream language.
There are some nice Scala web frameworks out there, including Lift and Play.
Akka, another Scala-based concurrent framework, has already established itself as toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant event-driven applications on the JVM.
Scala has also been used in along with , which has further fuelled its adoption by many Java developers interested in Big Data.
Btw, If you are interested in Spark, then you can also take a look at the course by Frank Kane on Udemy.
8. Growing Community
Along with the language and associated frameworks, the Scala community is also growing. Lots of programmers, including , are joining the Scala bandwagon.
More and more IDEs have started to support Scala syntax, and there’s much better support in and . There’s also great build tool support in SBT, Maven, and Ant.
In recent surveys, Scala has also been touted as the number one alternative to Java. In my opinion, to grow Scala as the real alternative of Java, given also has support, it has to attract more and more Java developers.
Getting big organizations like Twitter to adopt Scala certainly helps the community, as they have more resources and influence.
9. Concise Syntax
Java has long been criticized for his verbose and boilerplate-heavy syntax. Though it makes Java more readable, much like English, Scala has set a new benchmark in being concise and readable at the same time.
The Scala compiler, known as scalac (remember ) does more than you expect. It can generate , , and other things for you. Consider two code snippets of the same class written in Java and Scala to help you make your choice:
You can write the same thing, using Scala’s case class:
case class Book(name: String, price: double)By the way, you can also use the Lombok library, one of the , to remove the boilerplate code related to getters, setters, equals, hashCode, and toString. It can automatically generate those for you.
10. Easiest Functional Programming language
For a Java developer, learning a classical functional programming language like , , , or OCaml is rather more difficult than Scala.
In other words, Scala is relatively easy to learn because of its OOP functionality.
While taking their time to learn functional programming, Java developers can still be productive in Scala by leveraging their existing knowledge of . Like , Scala has clean syntax, nice libraries, good online documentation, and lots of people in the industry using it.
With a growing community of Scala on forums, it’s not difficult to find an answer to any Scala questions, which adds to your learning experience. If you are now convinced that Scala is a great thing to learn and want to start now I highly recommend you check out course by Daniel Ciocîrlan on Udemy.
5 Best Online Courses and Books to learn Scala and Functional Programming in 2024
Once you start learning Scala, I am sure you will LOVE IT. It’s not only got a cleaner OO code but also functional capabilities, it feels dynamic (like Python) but it also has a static type system that can prevent you from doing bad things.
If you decide to learn Scala here are some useful resources (books and online courses ) for further learning.
All the best with your journey into the beautiful world of Scala and functional programming. If you have any questions or feedback, please drop a note.
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P.S. — If you are keen to learn Scala and need some FREE online course then you can check out the For Beginner — A #FREE Course to start your Scala journey.
