2013. november 17., vasárnap

Scala Cookbook by Alvin Alexander; O'Reilly Media

I think I can suggest this book for every beginner and not so beginner Scala developer.

It is like a real cookbook to discover a new cuisine.

For starter the book begins with the basic ingredients ( Chapter 1 - Chapter 3). Introduction to the very basic building blocks and answers for the common problems/questions working with these. I think the discussed questions were chosen carefully, with these you can start to solve real world problems. For deep dive check Chapter 19.

Next the basics to write a ( Scala ) program ( Chapter 4 - Chapter 8 ). Here you can learn the building blocks of a real program from classes to packaging your program to modules with one of the important Scala specialty: the traits. Like in the previous part the structure is the same: starting from the basics you can have really useful information for everyday work in every subject. Again there is more in Chapter 20.

Following section of the book ( Chapter 9 - Chapter 14 ) is a deeper dive to Scala. Starting with the functional programming basics, here you can learn about the rich collection API, the IO, the Actor library, a very useful Scala tool, the REPL, and the tools included with Scala. There is a chapter for SBT the build tool used by Scala developers ( Chapter 18. )

The rest of the book discusses real world problems ( Chapter 15 - Chapter 17 ) , I think these are the starting points for Java developers who are interested in Scala and would like to see some solutions for everyday problems, some suggestions.

I found the style of the book very helpful. For example if there is a reference to some further reading then you will have a little summary of the referenced chapter, so you don't have to jump between chapters in the book if you don't want.

There are extra chapters available for the book, you can download here: http://examples.oreilly.com/9781449339616-files/Scala_Cookbook_bonus_chapters.pdf ( 141 pages ! )

You can have the book here: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026914.do

2013. szeptember 13., péntek