Popular ways to connect with the Scala community include forums, chat rooms, local user groups, and conferences.
The community is also the source of many libraries, tools, and other resources around Scala.
Who’s behind Scala?
The Scala language and associated websites are cooperative projects of the Scala Center at EPFL, Lightbend, and the Scala community more broadly, with participation from many companies, organizations, and individuals.
The Scala team at Lightbend concentrates on advancing the language, compiler, and standard library. The Scala Center focuses on education (especially online courses), documentation, open source community outreach, and tooling. Community participation in all of these efforts is strongly encouraged.
Scala was created by Prof. Martin Odersky. Martin and his research group at EPFL remain heavily involved with the language, including developing Dotty, a next-generation compiler for Scala.
Forums / Mailing Lists
The Scala Center operates two Discourse forums:
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users.scala-lang.org: The main forum for questions, discussions, and announcements about programming in Scala. Beginner questions are very welcome. Any question can and should receive a courteous and insightful answer. (Replaces the old scala-user and scala-announce groups.)
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contributors.scala-lang.org: For anything related to moving Scala forward; from Scala Platform library discussions, to Scala Improvement Process discussions, to development work on the Scala compiler, standard library, and modules. Core maintainers and open-source contributors are both welcome, as well as those who want to see what’s coming down the pipe and would like to be involved. (Replaces the old scala-internals, scala-language, scala-debate, scala-sips, and scala-tools groups.)
Discourse is an open-source forum and mailing list platform. You can participate via the web, or you can use “mailing list mode”, where you receive posts in your inbox and can reply to them via email. The web interface provides statistics, upvoting, polls, and other features. Posts can be written in Markdown, including syntax highlighting.
These forums are covered by the Scala Code of Conduct.
Lightbend operates a Discourse forum as well:
- discuss.lightbend.com: For discussion of reactive architectures, Akka, Play, Lagom, and related tooling including sbt.
Scala Jobs
Employers and job seekers can find each other in the scala/job-board Gitter room.
Job listings are not allowed in our other forums and chat rooms.
Chat Rooms
Our main chat platform is Gitter. See next section for other platforms.
The main Gitter room for Scala is:
- scala/scala: Questions, general discussion, etc. Beginner-friendly.
Other, more specialized rooms include:
- scala/center: for discussions about Scala community governance, processes, the Scala Platform, and projects going on at the Scala Center.
- scala/contributors: for contributors to discuss work on changes to Scala.
- scala/moocs: for talking about the Scala Center’s online courses
- scala/job-board: for employers and job seekers to connect with each other
- scala-native/scala-native: for discussion about the Scala to LLVM compiler.
- scala-js/scala-js: for discussion about the Scala to JavaScript compiler.
- lampepfl/dotty: for discussion about the next generation Scala compiler.
International rooms are available as well:
- scala/scala-india
- scala/ar
- scala/cn
- scala/de
- scala/es
- scala/fr
- scala/it
- scala/pl
- scala/pt
- scalajp
- scala_ru (Telegram)
- scala_en (Telegram)
All of the rooms above are covered by the Scala Code of Conduct.
There are many other rooms devoted to individual Scala libraries and technologies. Examples include:
- spark-scala/Lobby: for discussions and questions about using Scala for Spark programming
- typelevel/cats: for discussion about the Cats library of abstractions for functional programming and FP in general.
Chat Rooms (Discord, IRC)
Discord users can chat about Scala via this link.
IRC users can chat about Scala on the Scala IRC channel on Freenode: irc://irc.freenode.net/scala
As with Gitter, the Discord and IRC channels are covered by the Scala Code of Conduct. Moderation is handled by community volunteers and by representatives of the Scala Center.
User Groups
Find your local Scala user group on Scala Space or on Meetup’s Scala meetup list.
Group organizers can talk to each other on Scala User Group Organizers.
Conferences
See our events page.
ScalaBridge
Volunteers organizing free introductory Scala programming workshops for underrepresented groups, to improve diversity in the Scala community.
- ScalaBridge site
- How to organize: advice and help on how to bring ScalaBridge to your city
Stack Overflow
Scala is an active topic on Stack Overflow, a very popular programmer Q&A site.
There is a large and active Scala community on the /r/Scala subreddit.
Sources of Scala News
Official:
- Blog/News Page on this site
- @scala_lang on Twitter
Community:
- Scala Times weekly Scala newspaper
- #ThisWeekInScala weekly Scala newspaper
- Scala Love Podcast about the Scala programming language and its community
- The Scala Logs Podcast with interviews with developers, open source contributors, subject matter experts, and the like
Many Scala users are active on Twitter for sharing Scala-related news items and opinions. Ask your Scala friends who they follow on Twitter (besides @scala_lang!).
Community-Powered Learning Resources
- Scala Exercises
- Scala School
- Scala Puzzlers
- Scala Cookbook
- Interactive Tour
- Functional programming course/exercises
- Scala Online Courses
- Best Scala Tutorials On YouTube
Community Libraries and Tools
Finding libraries:
- Scaladex, maintained by the Scala Center, is “an index of the known Scala ecosystem”
- Awesome Scala is “a community driven list of useful Scala libraries, frameworks and software”
- Typelevel.org provides an assortment of popular libraries and extensions to Scala.
- Trending Scala repositories on GitHub
Staying current:
- Scala Times includes library releases
- #ThisWeekInScala includes library releases
Non-JVM platforms
- Scala.js compiles Scala code to JavaScript
- Scala Native compiles Scala code to LLVM for native execution
- Scala on Android community site
Dotty
The Scala Center
- The Scala Center is an open source foundation that brings together a coalition of individuals and organizations working together to contribute to Scala.
Phil Bagwell Memorial Scala Community Award
The Phil Bagwell Memorial Scala Community Award is given to individuals who have made significant efforts to grow the Scala Community.
Archives
Read-only archives of these retired groups remain available.