Scala Resources & Community links for the newcomer

During the last couple of months I have been asked a few times among colleagues and friends hot to get started with Scala. People come to Scala from diverse backgrounds such as… - Java folks looking for a better Java or just tired of waiting for Java features other modern languages such as C# already offer. - Ruby, PHP, and programmers that come from a scripting background looking for type safety. - People trying to bridge the best of both OOP and Functional paradigms. Scala is a vast language full of features with a very technical community. Don’t let your first step discourage you as you don’t need to know everything about Scala to become productive quickly. People in the mailing list will often talk about some crazy shit you don’t need to know just yet. Monads, Monoids, Combinators, Macros and things you may not even know how to pronounce,… Seriously guys as you start to learn about it it’s gonna blow your mind. It’s gonna take some time to digest all the info but it sure it’s worth it. Here is a few resources / steps may help you get started focused on its community and not so much on the technical details of downloading and running your first scala “hello world”

  1. Take the Coursera Progfun Course

    The first thing I’d recommend based on my experience is that you take the Coursera Progfun Course. This course sure is a great learning experience folks not used to functional programming that come from an imperative lang such as Java. Martin Odersky guides you through very interesting concepts regarding functional programming, immutability, collections, tail recursion, the Scala programming language principles. It is a great source of knowledge even for the most experienced Java programmers.

    image

  2. Subscribe to the scala-user mailing list

    A very active mailing list with topics ranging from newbie stuff all the way to hardcore discussions about new lang features. People are friendly and eager to help.
    image

  3. Join the G+ Scala Community

    Complementary to the scala-user mailing list there is also other social resources like the G+ community. You can find people sharing here articles, questions and all things Scala.

    image

  4. Browse available books see which one fits your style better.

    There are dozens of Books by now about Scala and other related scala frameworks and libraries such as Play, Akka, Lift…

    image
    Other books not listed above

  5. Subscribe to RSS feeds to find interesting articles about Scala.

    image

  6. Swing by SpeakerDeck presentations and Github project lists

    Discover what the community is building with Scala. There are tons of great OS projects being currently developed on Github.

  7. Attend live events and meet the community in person

    • Scala Days - Major Scala Event
      image
    • Scala Tribes - Communities Worldwide
      image
    • Scala Meetups

  8. Other resources and links of interest to newcomers

Did I miss anything? Please contribute to this post with any interesting links and help fellow developers learning Scala find their way around the most interesting Scala resources available.

Video del ganador local del Megathon Cádiz

jorgegalindo:

Buenas!! Gracias a los compañeros de Cyberneticos que grabaron la presentación de todos los proyectos os puedo enseñar cual ha sido el ganador local.

¡El videojuego CatsThulhu!

Música, ilustración y videojuego realizado enteramente en los tres días que se ha desarrollado el Megathon. Todo un meritazo si tenemos en cuenta que en verdad es 1 día y medio (entre presentación y demás)

jorgegalindo:

Algunas fotografias sacadas de ayer en el #Megathon Cádiz gracias a nuestro amigo Pedro Lozano. Podeis ver todas en su perfil de Flickr aquí.

Mirad que buen rollo de evento! 

Top