Scala vs Java Differences and Similarities between Java and Scala Programming language

Scala is new generation JVM language, which is generating popularity as alternative of arguable one of the most popular language Java. It's not yet as popular as Java, but slowly getting momentum. As more and more Java developers are learning Scala and inspired by Twitter, more and more companies are using Scala, it's future looks very bright. To start with, Scala has several good feature, which differentiate it from Java, but same time it has lot of similarities as well e.g. both Scala and Java are JVM based language, You can code Scala in Java way and Scala can use any Java library, which in my opinion a great decision made by designers of Scala. Since tremendous works has already been done in form of open source framework and library in Java, it's best to reuse them, rather than creating a separate set for Scala. Out of several differences, one of the main difference between Scala and Java is it's ability to take advantage of Functional programming paradigm and multi-core architecture of current  CPU. Since current CPU development trend is towards adding more cores, rather than increasing CPU cycles, it also favors functional programming paradigm. Though this differences may not be significant, once Java 8 will introduce lambdas, but it might be too early to comment. Apart from functional programming aspect, there are many other differences as well. One of the obvious one is improved readability and succinct code. Java is always on firing line for being too verbose, I thing Scala does take care of that and code which took 5 to 6 lines in Java, can be written in just 2 to 3 lines in Scala. Well Grounded Java Developer has some nice introduction on JVM languages like Scala, Groovy and Closure, which is worth reading.  In this article, we will see such kind of similarities and differences between Scala and Java.

Read more »

Related Posts by Categories