Alex Payne

I read the first part of this book, skimmed much of the rest and I'm restarting over in anticipation of Odersky's Coursera class on Scala. Having watched the first week of videos from Odersky, I don't get the feel that they're talking about the same language.

I believe most of my problem comes down to this statement on the back of the book (that having bought an ebook copy through O'Reilly I didn't see until recently) that says "Experience with one or more object-oriented languages, such as Java, C#, or Ruby, is recommended." I believe that's overstates the issue; experience with C++ has done little for me. The assumption seems to be that you know Java well, and possibly C# or Ruby would get you through.… (meer)

This is my first Scala book and it is a dense one. The density itself would not be the biggest problem had the book been better organized. Lots of forward references and sometimes obscure code examples do not make an easy read. I'm well aware that Scala is definitely not a small or a simple language, so I appreciate the effort to describe it but nevertheless I believe such a language deserves a better description. On the other hand no one can blame the authors for Scala's being a moving target, the book definitely needs an update or maybe a second edition to reflect the latest advances in Scala.

On the positive side it includes more than enough information to get you going with Scala development and gives some nice examples for using Java and Scala together. The author also mentions libraries that may prove to be useful and the references section of the book is a valuable part of the book for further study. I also consider the chapters on object system and type system quite good, I'm sure I'll be returning them for a better understanding.

Conclusion: Not a book for absolute beginners / inexperienced programmers. A second edition can be a good candidate for experienced Java developers who wish to expand their horizons.… (meer)