Part 2. Working with Scala

These five chapters in part 2 focus on working with Scala. You’ll build applications using the Simple Build Tool (SBT), connect to a database using Squeryl, build scalable and reusable components in Scala, and use actors to make concurrent programming easy.

Chapters 6 and 7 are companions, or rather, chapter 7 is an extension of chapter 6. In chapter 6 you’ll learn how to create a simple web application using the SBT and the Scalaz HTTP module. But the application you set out to build in chapter 6 won’t be complete by chapter’s end because to build a functional Kanban application, your application needs to store information such as stories and its status information into persistent storage. In chapter 7 you will complete the weKanban application and learn how to retrieve and store information in a relational database.

In chapter 8, in which you will learn how to build simple and reusable components, your focus will be on the type system—types of types. You’ll also learn about a new kind of polymorphism using type classes that allows you to express and create abstractions that are easy to extend and scale—a powerful construct to help you solve your day-to-day programming problems.