2012 was a big year for the Scala programming language - with monumental releases, adoption by major enterprises and social sites alike and a Scala Days conference that knocked the socks off years past, we'd like to take a quick moment to highlight a few things that address the "why learn Scala" question you may be asking yourself.
19 Pages of Scala Jobz!
The Knoldus Software team has created the Scala Jobz app (built with Scala and Play) to provide a central listing of Scala jobs. There are already 19 pages of jobs! There is no doubt that the job market for Scala developers is huge and growing quickly!
Should You Learn Scala?
Jean Yang, a Ph.D. Computer Science student at MIT, makes a great case for learning Scala, arguing that its libraries and interoperability with Java make it ideal for mainstream adoption. Jean points out that learning Scala makes you more marketable as a developer, since companies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Quora are all looking for hires with Scala skills.
Scala Second Impressions
If you made the leap to Scala and found features lacking or simply were not persuaded, then check out Rod Hilton's Scala Second Impressions blog post. Rod previously shared his early thoughts on Scala about a year ago, and originally had some issues with the compiler, APIs and general youth of the language. But his new article revises these assumptions and makes the delightful statement that "Scala is awesome!"
Scala is like Git
Sander Mak discusses complexity issues surrounding Scala on Branch and Bound, tackling the topic of how the language is often portrayed as being too hard to pick up. Sanders compares these statements to similar arguments around Git, giving the Scala complexity discussion an entirely new perspective.
Scala, the Next Frontier
Finally, if you missed Barb Darrow's article on GigaOm titled "How Martin Odersky rewrote the rules of coding for a mobile world", it's definitely worth reading. Barb outlines the benefits of Scala in a real-world context and links the language to advancements in mobile and cloud environments. Her portrayal of Odersky as "belonging in the same pantheon of programming gods as James Gosling, the father of Java itself; Niklaus Wirth, who wrote Pascal (and with whom Odersky studied); Anders Hejlsberg, of Turbo Pascal fame; and Bjarne Stoustrup, who wrote C++ and other languages," makes us pretty proud!
New Year's Resolution to Learn Scala in 2013
If you've made a resolution to learn Scala in 2013, then get started with the Scala Learning Resources and subscribe to the monthly Typesafe newsletter to follow the latest news. Here's to a Scalacious 2013! Happy New Year!
