James P. Prickett said
This is a fantastic book; one of the best programming language books I have read. The authors really take a deep dive into parts of the language to give you a firm grasp of it. Five stars all the way!
M Tran said
Both the language and this book are extremely well made. Discussions on language design decisions, such as object equality in chapter 28, are deep and valuable to every programmer. I can see the depth of theoretical research that Martin O. and others have put into Scala. But the end result is not just great theoretically, it's also a pragmatic language, combining strength of both functional and imperative worlds on a flexible and mature platform - the JVM. It's a huge task, which reflects in the amount of tough problems and decisions the authors documented so well in this book. The book itself is easy to read, with topics flow nicely from one concept to the next. You'll be reminded of concepts previously discussed from time to time.
I came to Scala from a mainly C# background with just a bit of functional programming knowledge. To better appreciate FP features in Scala, I recommend reading the Why Functional Programming Matters whitepaper by John Hughes.
Taneli I. Otala said
To write a book on how to program in Scala... tough job. The language is both Functional and Empirical at the same time, like two languages rolled in one -- twice the work in describing it. Most fledgling languages have a limited library -- this one inherits all of Java and that makes an immense library.
This book does an admirable job in gently introducing most of the concepts with sufficient number of examples. I'd say that the authors favored thoroughness over comprehensiveness, when they had to choose.
What I miss is a reference (both syntax and library), and a deeper look into implementation, especially speed (of constructs such as mapping) and memory consumption of objects. Also, with the rich set of mutable and immutable objects, listing concrete performance benefits would be nice.
But, then again... the items that I list missing, are probably worth another 2 or 3 similar (736 page) books.
I liked this book, it is a good starting point for anyone who wants to get serious with Scala.
Syed A. Rizvi said
At the point I bought this book this was only Scala book in print. I compared it a little with Pragmatic Programmers Beta book on Scala but found it more comprehensive tutorial of the language.
As per my discussion with another friend who bought this book, this book is meant to be read cover to cover to get a complete grasp of Scala. I was thinking this would be a good scala reference book too but I have had better luck with Scala docs than this book for reference.
Scala is a evolving and growing language but this book is definitely a good early starter and is well written.
Juan Cruz Nores said
It's clearly a book to read from cover to cover. The feeling is that of a tutorial, but the depth it covers will make it a must have reference of the language.
I've found myself smiling more than once while reading it (in a geeky kind of way) when you realize the brilliance of some of the design decisions that went into the language.
I think that this book, regardless of your background, will make you a better programmer.
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