Scala 2 Methods and Functions

Scala is emerging as a popular choice for working with large datasets and frameworks such as Spark. This course will teach you about Scala's support for first-class and higher-order functions and the differences between methods and functions.

Working with Big Data these days increasingly requires an understanding of functional programming constructs, because of how easily functional code can be distributed. Scala is a general-purpose programming language that runs on the JVM and supports both functional and object-oriented programming paradigms.

In this course, Scala Methods and Functions, you’ll learn to utilize those aspects of Scala that are specific to the functional programming paradigm.

First, you'll see how variables with different type modifiers are assigned and evaluated and you’ll understand the differences between Scala val, var, lazy val, and def keywords.

Next, you’ll discover the attributes of first-class functions, and the use of higher-order functions and partial functions in order to simplify code design.

Next, you’ll learn how to harness the power of features for Scala methods such as currying, recursion, named and positional arguments, and varargs.

Finally, you'll learn how to deal with missing values and errors in Scala and work with functional error handling idioms such as Try-Success-Failure, Option-Some-None, and Either-Right-Left.

When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge of functions and methods in Scala needed to write correct, concise, yet easily understandable code that combines the power of the functional programming paradigm with a strong static type system.