Understanding Basic Scala Elements for Functional Programming

If you want to build software in a mathematical way or you need to work with datasets, functional programming could be the right choice for you. As the name suggests, functional programming is a paradigm where you design and implement algorithms by applying and composing functions. In the functional programming paradigm, the function is the main building block, and you can use it as a value, you can pass it as an argument, and you can receive it as a function result. In this paradigm, you shouldn't consider mutability, iterations, and common components you usually find in the imperative and/or object-oriented paradigm.

Scala is one of the most used and easy-to-learn languages with the functional paradigm. If you want to master the functional paradigm with Scala, you need to first understand basic principles as the different types of variable definition, and how to define a function.

In this lab, you will understand how to use the different variable definitions, and how to define functions in Scala.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this beginner-level lab, you will be able to:

• Understand the basic elements needed for the functional paradigm in Scala
• Leverage the basic elements to build your first Scala application

Intended Audience

This lab is intended for:

• Software engineers who need to move to the functional paradigm with Scala
• Data engineers who need to perform operations and transformations on datasets leveraging the functional paradigm with Scala

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this lab, you should have basic knowledge of programming in at least one language. To achieve this, we suggest taking the following learning path:

• Python for Beginners

Updates

April 20th, 2023 - Updated theia to enable autosave