Scala runs...

  • on the JVM
  • on JavaScript in your browser
  • natively with LLVM beta

Scala in a Nutshell

click the boxes below to see Scala in action!

Seamless Java Interop

Scala runs on the JVM, so Java and Scala stacks can be freely mixed for totally seamless integration.

Type Inference

So the type system doesn’t feel so static. Don’t work for the type system. Let the type system work for you!

Concurrency & Distribution

Use data-parallel operations on collections, use actors for concurrency and distribution, or futures for asynchronous programming.

Author.scala
class Author(val firstName: String,
    val lastName: String) extends Comparable[Author] {

  override def compareTo(that: Author) = {
    val lastNameComp = this.lastName compareTo that.lastName
    if (lastNameComp != 0) lastNameComp
    else this.firstName compareTo that.firstName
  }
}

object Author {
  def loadAuthorsFromFile(file: java.io.File): List[Author] = ???
}
App.java
import static scala.collection.JavaConversions.asJavaCollection;

public class App {
    public List<Author> loadAuthorsFromFile(File file) {
        return new ArrayList<Author>(asJavaCollection(
            Author.loadAuthorsFromFile(file)));
    }

    public void sortAuthors(List<Author> authors) {
        Collections.sort(authors);
    }

    public void displaySortedAuthors(File file) {
        List<Author> authors = loadAuthorsFromFile(file);
        sortAuthors(authors);
        for (Author author : authors) {
            System.out.println(
                author.lastName() + ", " + author.firstName());
        }
    }
}

Combine Scala and Java seamlessly

Scala classes are ultimately JVM classes. You can create Java objects, call their methods and inherit from Java classes transparently from Scala. Similarly, Java code can reference Scala classes and objects.


In this example, the Scala class Author implements the Java interface Comparable<T> and works with Java Files. The Java code uses a method from the companion object Author, and accesses fields of the Author class. It also uses JavaConversions to convert between Scala collections and Java collections.

Type inference
scala> class Person(val name: String, val age: Int) {
     |   override def toString = s"$name ($age)"
     | }
defined class Person

scala> def underagePeopleNames(persons: List[Person]) = {
     |   for (person <- persons; if person.age < 18)
     |     yield person.name
     | }
underagePeopleNames: (persons: List[Person])List[String]

scala> def createRandomPeople() = {
     |   val names = List("Alice", "Bob", "Carol",
     |       "Dave", "Eve", "Frank")
     |   for (name <- names) yield {
     |     val age = (Random.nextGaussian()*8 + 20).toInt
     |     new Person(name, age)
     |   }
     | }
createRandomPeople: ()List[Person]

scala> val people = createRandomPeople()
people: List[Person] = List(Alice (16), Bob (16), Carol (19), Dave (18), Eve (26), Frank (11))

scala> underagePeopleNames(people)
res1: List[String] = List(Alice, Bob, Frank)

Let the compiler figure out the types for you

The Scala compiler is smart about static types. Most of the time, you need not tell it the types of your variables. Instead, its powerful type inference will figure them out for you.

In this interactive REPL session (Read-Eval-Print-Loop), we define a class and two functions. You can observe that the compiler infers the result types of the functions automatically, as well as all the intermediate values.

Concurrent/Distributed
val x = Future { someExpensiveComputation() }
val y = Future { someOtherExpensiveComputation() }
val z = for (a <- x; b <- y) yield a*b
for (c <- z) println("Result: " + c)
println("Meanwhile, the main thread goes on!")

Go Concurrent or Distributed with Futures & Promises

In Scala, futures and promises can be used to process data asynchronously, making it easier to parallelize or even distribute your application.

In this example, the Future{} construct evaluates its argument asynchronously, and returns a handle to the asynchronous result as a Future[Int]. For-comprehensions can be used to register new callbacks (to post new things to do) when the future is completed, i.e., when the computation is finished. And since all this is executed asynchronously, without blocking, the main program thread can continue doing other work in the meantime.

Traits

Combine the flexibility of Java-style interfaces with the power of classes. Think principled multiple-inheritance.

Pattern Matching

Think “switch” on steroids. Match against class hierarchies, sequences, and more.

Higher-order functions

Functions are first-class objects. Compose them with guaranteed type safety. Use them anywhere, pass them to anything.

Traits
abstract class Spacecraft {
  def engage(): Unit
}
trait CommandoBridge extends Spacecraft {
  def engage(): Unit = {
    for (_ <- 1 to 3)
      speedUp()
  }
  def speedUp(): Unit
}
trait PulseEngine extends Spacecraft {
  val maxPulse: Int
  var currentPulse: Int = 0
  def speedUp(): Unit = {
    if (currentPulse < maxPulse)
      currentPulse += 1
  }
}
class StarCruiser extends Spacecraft
                     with CommandoBridge
                     with PulseEngine {
  val maxPulse = 200
}

Flexibly Combine Interface & Behavior

In Scala, multiple traits can be mixed into a class to combine their interface and their behavior.

Here, a StarCruiser is a Spacecraft with a CommandoBridge that knows how to engage the ship (provided a means to speed up) and a PulseEngine that specifies how to speed up.

Switch on the structure of your data

In Scala, case classes are used to represent structural data types. They implicitly equip the class with meaningful toString, equals and hashCode methods, as well as the ability to be deconstructed with pattern matching.


In this example, we define a small set of case classes that represent binary trees of integers (the generic version is omitted for simplicity here). In inOrder, the match construct chooses the right branch, depending on the type of t, and at the same time deconstructs the arguments of a Node.

Pattern matching
// Define a set of case classes for representing binary trees.
sealed abstract class Tree
case class Node(elem: Int, left: Tree, right: Tree) extends Tree
case object Leaf extends Tree

// Return the in-order traversal sequence of a given tree.
def inOrder(t: Tree): List[Int] = t match {
  case Node(e, l, r) => inOrder(l) ::: List(e) ::: inOrder(r)
  case Leaf          => List()
}

Go Functional with Higher-Order Functions

In Scala, functions are values, and can be defined as anonymous functions with a concise syntax.

Scala
val people: Array[Person]

// Partition `people` into two arrays `minors` and `adults`.
// Use the anonymous function `(_.age < 18)` as a predicate for partitioning.
val (minors, adults) = people partition (_.age < 18)
Java
List<Person> people;

List<Person> minors = new ArrayList<Person>(people.size());
List<Person> adults = new ArrayList<Person>(people.size());
for (Person person : people) {
    if (person.getAge() < 18)
        minors.add(person);
    else
        adults.add(person);
}
Learn More

or visit the Scala Documentation

IDEs for Scala

Run Scala in your browser

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Learn More
Run Scala code interactively

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Scala ecosystem

The Scala Library Index (or Scaladex) is a representation of a map of all published Scala libraries. With Scaladex, a developer can now query more than 175,000 releases of Scala libraries. Scaladex is officially supported by Scala Center.

The Scala Library Index

What’s New

BLOG

Scala 3 is here!🎉🎉🎉

Friday, May 14, 2021

After 8 years of work, 28,000 commits, 7,400 pull requests, 4,100 closed issues – Scala 3 is finally out. Since the first commit on December 6th 2012, more than a hundred people have contributed to the project. Today, Scala 3 incorporates the latest research in type theory as well as the industry experience of Scala 2. We’ve seen what worked well (or not so well) for the community in Scala 2. Based on this experience we’ve created the third iteration of Scala – easy to use, learn, and scale.

Exciting new features: how to get started?

A lot of new features ended up in Scala 3, and you may wonder where you should start learning about all of it. The go-to place for learning Scala 3 is its documentation.

To get a taste of all the new features that went into Scala 3, you can have a look at the New in Scala 3 article. For a streamlined and more thorough introduction, see the Scala 3 Book. You can try Scala 3 online without installing anything on your machine via Scastie, or you can follow the Getting Started guide to install it on your machine.

One thing has changed completely in Scala 3 compared to Scala 2: it is macros. You can learn more about how they work in Scala 3 in the dedicated documentation.

If you are a seasoned user of Scala 2, chances are you have some projects you’d like to port from Scala 2 to Scala 3. You may find the Migration guide helpful. It outlines the compatibility story between Scala 2 and Scala 3: source compatibility, binary compatibility, changed and dropped features, metaprogramming.

And if you need any help in your Scala journey, you can find various resources to talk to fellow Scala users here.

Ecosystem

Who’s already on Scala 3? Which libraries can you already use? A great place to answer this question is Scaladex. Scaladex is an index of Scala libraries where you can explore the ecosystem by language version, platform or the type of job a library does. At the time of writing this article, there are 308 early adopter libraries on Scala 3, compared to 2597 Scala 2.13 libraries.

Releases and Guarantees in 3.x era

We intend to continue releasing every 6 weeks after 3.0.0, bumping the patch version every time we do so. A stable 3.0.x release will be preceded with 3.0.x-RC1 release candidate 6 weeks prior to such a stable release. Such patch releases will contain bug fixes for bugs affecting the respective minor version. Patch versions will be forward and backward compatible with each other over the source, binary and TASTy compatibilities.

Of course, we intend to continue the development of the language in ways other than bug fixing. New language features and standard library APIs will appear in future minor versions. As any addition in library APIs, these may break backward source compatibility in minor, rare ways. However, minor releases will not break backward binary or TASTy compatibility. Concretely, that means that libraries built with Scala 3.0.0 will keep working with Scala 3.x.y!

Library authors: Join our community build

Scala 3 now has a set of widely-used community libraries that are built against every nightly Scala 3 snapshot. At present, there are 67 projects included, and the number is growing rapidly. Join our community build to make sure that our regression suite includes your library.

Contributors

Thank you to all the contributors who made this release possible 🎉

All-time contributors who made Scala 3 a reality, according to git shortlog -sn --no-merges 2308509d2651ee78e1122b5d61b798c984c96c4d..3.0.0, are:

  8661  Martin Odersky
  3186  Nicolas Stucki
  1435  Guillaume Martres
   976  Dmitry Petrashko
   797  Liu Fengyun
   774  Felix Mulder
   407  Allan Renucci
   324  liu fengyun
   324  Olivier Blanvillain
   323  Martin Duhem
   224  Aleksander Boruch-Gruszecki
   204  Jamie Thompson
   201  Krzysztof Romanowski
   200  SĂ©bastien Doeraene
   172  Paolo G. Giarrusso
   171  Bryan Abate
   163  Aggelos Biboudis
   162  Anatolii Kmetiuk
   160  Anatolii
   129  Robert Stoll
   103  bishabosha
   103  Filip ZybaƂa
   101  Miles Sabin
    82  Antoine Brunner
    64  poechsel
    64  Guillaume Raffin
    62  Tom Grigg
    61  Lan, Jian
    55  noti0na1
    54  Andrzej Ratajczak
    51  odersky
    50  Nikita Eshkeev
    44  Guillaume R
    37  Stéphane Micheloud
    34  Enno Runne
    33  Sara Alemanno
    31  PaweƂ Marks
    30  Ondrej Lhotak
    29  Som Snytt
    29  Abel Nieto
    26  Ruslan Shevchenko
    25  VladimirNik
    23  Adrien Piquerez
    22  Raphael Jolly
    22  Jonathan Brachthäuser
    22  MichaƂ PaƂka
    20  vsalvis
    20  Tobias Bordenca
    20  Fengyun Liu
    19  Martijn Hoekstra
    19  Samuel Gruetter
    19  Phil
    19  Maxime Kjaer
    18  Jendrik Wenke
    17  Jason Zaugg
    16  Krzysztof Romanwoski
    16  Arnaud ESTEVE
    15  Dale Wijnand
    14  Jaemin Hong
    13  gzoller
    13  Vlad Ureche
    12  Miron Aseev
    12  Wojtek Swiderski
    11  Yichen Xu
    11  Grzegorz Bielski
    10  Sebastian Nadorp
    10  Jentsch
    10  bjornregnell
    10  Arnaud Esteve
    10  Dmytro Melnychenko
    10  Lionel Parreaux
     9  Jonathan BrachthÀuser
     9  yu-croco
     9  Jasper Moeys
     8  Clemens Winter
     8  Lukas Rytz
     8  Varunram Ganesh
     8  Oron Port
     8  Reto HablĂŒtzel
     7  Ólafur Páll Geirsson
     7  Varunram
     7  benkobalog
     7  Eugene Melekhov
     6  jvican
     6  Seth Tisue
     6  Natsu Kagami
     6  Thierry Treyer
     6  Akhtiam Sakaev
     6  Olivier ROLAND
     6  Olafur Pall Geirsson
     5  Nada Amin
     5  Michael Pilquist
     5  Ausmarton Zarino Fernandes
     5  k0ala
     5  Vlastimil Dort
     5  Valthor Halldorsson
     5  Travis Brown
     5  Tomasz Godzik
     5  Alex Merritt
     5  Guillaume Massé
     5  Alexander Myltsev
     5  Saloni Vithalani
     5  Raphael Bosshard
     5  Julien Richard-Foy
     4  MichaƂ Gutowski
     4  Sebastian Harko
     4  fhackett
     4  ysthakur
     4  Ben Elliott
     4  Raymond Tay
     4  Ayush
     4  Neeraj Jaiswal
     4  Sarunas Valaskevicius
     4  Lucas Burson
     4  Dotty CI
     4  Eric K Richardson
     4  Vitor Vieira
     4  Yevgen Nerush
     4  Shane Delmore
     4  Andrew Valencik
     4  senia-psm
     4  Minghao Liu
     4  Matt D'Souza
     4  Eugene Yokota
     4  Hanns Holger Rutz
     4  Alex Zolotko
     4  Georg Schmid
     4  Chris Birchall
     4  december32
     4  Ingar Abrahamsen
     3  Michal Gutowski
     3  Gabriele Petronella
     3  Gabi Volpe
     3  Master-Killer
     3  Uko
     3  Timothée Floure
     3  xuwei-k
     3  Eric Loots
     3  Enno
     3  Edmund Noble
     3  Saurabh Rawat
     3  Albert Chen
     3  Jakob Odersky
     3  Daniel Li
     3  Dani Rey
     3  ansvonwa
     3  duanebester
     3  Alexandre Archambault
     3  jerylee
     3  kenji yoshida
     3  Artur Opala
     3  Adriaan Moors
     3  Ankit Soni
     3  Adam Fraser
     3  Pavel Shirshov
     3  JoĂŁo Pedro Evangelista
     3  Andrea Mocci
     3  Krzysztof Bochenek
     3  Tudor Voicu
     2  Tobias Schlatter
     2  Alden Torres
     2  AnEmortalKid
     2  Andrew Zurn
     2  Ara Adkins
     2  Artsiom Miklushou
     2  Ashwin Bhaskar
     2  Aurélien Richez
     2  Camila Andrea Gonzalez Williamson
     2  Dvir Faivel
     2  Fabian Page
     2  FabioPinheiro
     2  Francois GORET
     2  Glavo
     2  Greg Pevnev
     2  Henrik Huttunen
     2  Hermes EspĂ­nola GonzĂĄlez
     2  James Thompson
     2  Jan Christopher Vogt
     2  Jens Kat
     2  Jim Van Horn
     2  Jon Pretty
     2  Lorand Szakacs
     2  Luc Henninger
     2  Lucas
     2  Matthew Pickering
     2  Matthias Sperl
     2  Mikael Blomstrand
     2  Nadezhda Balashova
     2  Nikolay
     2  Nikolay.Tropin
     2  Patrik Mada
     2  Philippus
     2  Philippus Baalman
     2  RadosƂaw Waƛko
     2  Rafal Piotrowski
     2  Robert Soeldner
     2  Roberto Bonvallet
     2  Rodrigo Fernandes
     2  Steven Heidel
     2  Thiago Pereira
     2  Tudor
     2  William Narmontas
     2  changvvb
     2  dos65
     2  esarbe
     2  johnregan
     2  lloydmeta
     2  typeness
     2  veera venky
     2  xhudik
     2  ybasket
     1  Jyotman Singh
     1  Justin du Coeur, AKA Mark Waks
     1  Julien Jean Paul Sirocchi
     1  JoĂŁo Pedro de Carvalho
     1  rsoeldner
     1  Jonathan Skowera
     1  Jonathan Rodriguez
     1  Jon-Anders Teigen
     1  ruben
     1  Alexander Slesarenko
     1  Pierre Ricadat
     1  Piotr Gabara
     1  squid314
     1  tOverney
     1  Raj Parekh
     1  Rajesh Veeranki
     1  John Sullivan
     1  Johannes Rudolph
     1  Joan
     1  Jimin Hsieh
     1  Richard Beddington
     1  Rick M
     1  Rike-Benjamin Schuppner
     1  tanaka takaya
     1  Jean Detoeuf
     1  tanishiking
     1  tim-zh
     1  Jarrod Janssen
     1  Jan Rock
     1  Sam Desborough
     1  Jakub KozƂowski
     1  Sandro Stucki
     1  Jacob J
     1  Jaap van der Plas
     1  Ivano Pagano
     1  Ivan Youroff
     1  Iltotore
     1  Serhii Pererva
     1  Igor Mielientiev
     1  Ignasi Marimon-Clos
     1  Simon Hafner
     1  Simon Popugaev
     1  Ian Tabolt
     1  SrTobi
     1  Stefan Zeiger
     1  Stephane MICHELOUD
     1  tokkiyaa
     1  Stéphane MICHELOUD
     1  Herdy Handoko
     1  Szymon Pajzert
     1  Harrison Houghton
     1  Taisuke Oe
     1  yytyd
     1  Harpreet Singh
     1  Haemin Yoo
     1  Timur Abishev
     1  Grzegorz Kossakowski
     1  Tobias Kahlert
     1  0xflotus
     1  Greg Zoller
     1  Tomas
     1  George Leontiev
     1  Florian Schmaus
     1  zgrybus
     1  Florian Cassayre
     1  Ferhat Aydın
     1  Umayah Abdennabi
     1  Fedor Shiriaev
     1  Dmitry Melnichenko
     1  Dmitrii Naumenko
     1  Vasil Vasilev
     1  Victor
     1  Deon Taljaard
     1  Denis Buzdalov
     1  Dean Wampler
     1  David Hoepelman
     1  Vykintas Narmontas (William)
     1  Alexander Shamukov
     1  DarkDimius
     1  Daniel Reigada
     1  Daniel Murray
     1  Yilin Wei
     1  ZoltĂĄn Elek
     1  adpi2
     1  aesteve
     1  amanjpro
     1  andreaTP
     1  Damian Albrun
     1  ayush
     1  benkbalog
     1  Csongor Kiss
     1  Ciara O'Brien
     1  Carlos Quiroz
     1  brunnerant
     1  =
     1  costa100
     1  Bunyod
     1  dieutth
     1  AlexSikia
     1  Brian Wignall
     1  ćŒ ćż—è±Ș
     1  felher
     1  Brandon Elam Barker
     1  fschueler
     1  gan74
     1  gnp
     1  gosubpl
     1  Bojan Dunaj
     1  iroha168
     1  Ben Hutchison
     1  Albert Serrallé Ríos
     1  Batanick
     1  Bartosz KrasiƄski
     1  August Nagro
     1  AngAng
     1  Adam Trousdale
     1  lpwisniewski
     1  manojo
     1  mentegy
     1  mikhail
     1  Mathias
     1  msosnicki
     1  Ang9876
     1  Max Ovsiankin
     1  Markus Kahl
     1  Markus Hauck
     1  Marc Karassev
     1  Mads Hartmann
     1  Lukas Ciszewski
     1  Ang Hao Yang
     1  Mike Samuel
     1  Lucas Jenß
     1  Li Haoyi
     1  Lanny Ripple
     1  Mohuety Kirisame
     1  Krzysiek Bochenek
     1  phderome
     1  Kevin Dreßler
     1  Keith Pinson
     1  Kazuyoshi Kato
     1  Kazuhiro Sera
     1  Niklas Vest
     1  Amadou CISSE
     1  riiswa
     1  Katrix
     1  Karol Chmist
     1  Ondra Pelech

Recently

The Scala Center Action Towards a More Safe and Respectful Community Environment

  • Tuesday, May 11, 2021
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  • BLOG

The Scala community must be a safe and welcoming place for everyone. Therefore, the Scala Center condemns behaviors that may hurt our mem...

Scala 3 in sbt 1.5

  • Thursday, April 8, 2021
  • ‱
  • Adrien Piquerez, Scala Center
  • BLOG

We are delighted to announce that sbt 1.5.0 supports Scala 3 out-of-the-box. From the sbt user viewpoint, Scala 3 is just another Scala ...

GSoC 2021 Here we come!

  • Thursday, March 11, 2021
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  • BLOG

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