Scala is a general purpose programming language that is both object-oriented and functional. It runs on the Java Virtual Machine and interoperates seamlessly with Java code. Major companies like Twitter, LinkedIn, and NASA use Scala for critical applications because it allows them to develop more functionality with less code, improving productivity and scalability. The commercial support and libraries available for Scala have grown substantially, establishing it as a mature language in the enterprise.

1. Why Scala?
Introducing Scala to your boss
João Bernardino
December 2011
Thursday, December 1, 11

2. “If I were to pick a language to use today other than Java, it
would be Scala”
James Gosling, creator of Java
“If someone had shown me the ‘Programming in Scala’ book
back in 2003, I’d probably have never created Groovy”
James Strachan, creator of Groovy
“No other language on the JVM seems as capable of being a
‘replacement for Java’ as Scala, and the momentum behind Scala
is now unquestionable.”
Charles Nutter, co-creator of JRuby
Thursday, December 1, 11

3. History
Scala was designed from 2001 by Martin Odersky, creator of:
javac (Sun’s Java compiler)
Java 5 Generics
First released in late 2003 / early 2004
Current version: 2.9.1
Thursday, December 1, 11

4. One Slider
Scala incorporates and unifies the best features from many
previous languages
Scala’s central drive is to make life easier and more productive for
the developer
It cuts down boilerplate
It adds expressiveness (Object Oriented + Functional
Programming)
It protects existing investments by running on the Java Virtual
Machine and interoperating seamlessly with Java
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5. Scala is...
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6. Scala is...
a general purposed programming language
Some uses of Scala:
Scripting
Web Applications
Messaging
Highly scalable and performing backends
Mobile (android) Applications
DSLs
Graphical User Interfaces
Thursday, December 1, 11

7. Scala is...
both Object-Oriented and Functional
Developers coming from Java can apply familiar design patterns
with Scala, while leveraging powerful new object-oriented features
➡ Easy transition from Java
Inspired by the long tradition of functional programming, Scala
makes it easy to develop for modern multi-core CPUs and
distributed cloud computing workloads that require concurrency
and parallelism
➡ Ideal to solve today’s challenges in building large enterprise
and Internet applications
Thursday, December 1, 11

8. Scala is...
scalable and extensible
Scala emphasizes scalability - up to large development teams,
large codebases and large number of CPU cores
Scala makes it easy to add new language constructs in form of
libraries, or to create domain-specific languages (DSLs)
➡ Reduce integration costs
➡ Rapid prototyping
Thursday, December 1, 11

9. Scala is...
Productive
Scala is a concise and pragmatic language
Scala programs are 1/2 to 1/3 of their Java equivalents
Developers can write more functionality with less code, in
less time
Testing, review and maintenance is cheaper
➡ Productivity and quality increase
➡ Shorter time-to-market
Thursday, December 1, 11

10. Scala is...
interoperable with Java
Scala protects your investment in existing Java libraries, tools and developer skills
Scala runs on the extremely mature Java Virtual Machine and has performance on
par with Java
Scala interoperates flawlessly with Java. Scala classes can call and be called by any
Java class
➡ Allows incremental adoption, using existing Java code as is
➡ The development team will work on their familiar tools, but writing shorter, faster
and more scalable code
➡ The operations team won’t see the difference, while using their well-understood
deployment techniques
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11. Scala in the Enterprise
Thursday, December 1, 11

12. Scala is...
used by the world’s leading companies
The number of leading companies that are successfully using Scala for critical
business applications has grown enormously (and continues to grow)
As a consequence, demand for Scala developers has grown dramatically while at the
same time Scala has matured and spawned a solid support ecosystem
Thursday, December 1, 11

13. Twitter
Twitter ported most of it’s back-end infrastructure, services
and APIs to Scala
The majority of users’ interactions with Twitter are Scala-
powered
“Scala played a critical role in improving the scalability and
reliability of Twitter’s back-end services”
Alex Payne, former Platform lead at Twitter
Thursday, December 1, 11

14. LinkedIn
They created Norbert, a framework written in Scala that makes it fast
and easy to write asynchronous, cluster aware, message based client/
server applications
They use it to power their People Search Engine (250 queries per
second, 100 tokens per query), using a scatter-gather approach across
a large server farm
“Scala has been a powerful tool for LinkedIn and has offered
greater scalability and efficiency towards our programming efforts”
Chris Conrad, Engeneering manager at LinkedIn
Thursday, December 1, 11

15. NASA is using Scala for their jet propulsion DSL, to be used
in shuttle and other space mission launch control operations
Foursquare was completely ported to Scala and Lift
The Guardian ported their real-time content searching,
indexing and updating API from Java to Scala, in some cases
reducing the search index build time from 20 hours to just
one.
“We’ve found that Scala enabled us to deliver things faster
with less code. It’s reinvigorated the team”
Graham Tackley, guardian.co.uk
Thursday, December 1, 11

16. Novell used Scala and Lift to developed Pulse, a cloud-based, real-
time collaboration platform for the enterprise
“Scala’s features saved us countless man-hours working on
Pulse and allowed us to deliver a product into production much
sooner than I ever would have imagined”
Daniel Spiewak, Pulse developer
At Simple all performance-sensitive components are build in Scala
“Our team is using both Scala and Akka to build a flexible
architecture that will scale predictably when needed”
Alex Payne, CTO of Simple
Thursday, December 1, 11

17. Scala’s ecosystem
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18. Commercial Support...
...has taken a leap forward as Odersky (creator of Scala) and Bóner (creator of Akka)
founded Typesafe, a new company with $3M in Series A financing led by Greylock
Partners (Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn, Pandora...)
Typesafe (and it’s partners worldwide) provide,
Commercial support and maintenance
Training
Consulting
Typesafe declared one of it’s top priorities the increase in quality of Scala’s developer
tools, by:
Taking change of all key open source tools, such as SBT and Scala’s IDE for Eclipse
Committing to help improve the proprietary tools, like IntelliJ IDEA
Thursday, December 1, 11

19. Libraries and Frameworks
Akka - Even-driven Middleware in Scala, ideal for building high
performance and reliable distributed application
Lift - The most powerful, secure and scalable web framework today
Play - Pure Java and Scala full-stack web application framework
Kestrel - Twitter’s open sourced message queue
ScalaModules - DSL for OSGi development
Many more exist and new ones are coming up to Scala ecosystem every
day
and also... every Java library can be used in your Scala project!
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20. So, why Scala?
Thursday, December 1, 11

21. Productivity, efficiency and quality increase
Decrease in maintenance costs
Technology neutral (runs on the JVM, all java libraries available)
Soft landing for Java developers
Scala can be introduced incrementally
Replaces scripting languages and in-house DSLs
Excellent basis for concurrent, parallel and distributed computing
Stable and open. Acceptance and adoption ramping up
Advanced frameworks and powerful new technologies tailored to solve
today’s programming challenges
Thursday, December 1, 11

22. </end>
João Bernardino
@JohnBernas
Thursday, December 1, 11