Is learning Scala worth in 2022 | Tech

Sometimes it is tricky to make a decision about the new learnings one should pursue to elevate and leverage their proficiency levels in the ‘Languages’ space, especially in the big data ecosystem where plenty of languages are in use and a lot are being adopted at a very rapid pace. As the data is growing exponentially, so is the tech stack. If one looks around, finds that there are a number of programming languages to work upon. All of them have some pros and cons. But the question arises is which one to follow up if we would want to choose among Scala, Python, Java, Ruby, R, Go, etc.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the language “SCALA” along with all its feature and also will examine how it differs and competes with the likes of Python and Java. The intent is to help you in deciding whether would it be worth learning and scale on Scala in 2022.

What is Scala –

Scala is an abbreviation of Scalable Language. It is a statically typed general-purpose programming language that combines object-oriented and functional programming in one concise. Its static types help in avoiding bugs in complex applications, and its JVM and JavaScript runtime let you build high-performance systems with easy access to huge ecosystems of libraries.

So, the definition of Scala witnesses the importance of it, where it addresses many problems being faced. The super functional programming in it lets you take the advantage of multi-core systems.

Since it is quite difficult to compare it with all of the other techs, even some of them. We’ll only compare it with Python and JAVA (the reason is pretty simple Python is one of the most trending languages because of its growing community and Java being a parent language of Scala).

So, before going through the Comparison of Scala with several languages, there might be some curiosity about its growth and evaluation in the Tech market i.e. what is the trend of Scala, opportunity, scope, etc.

Trend….

So the trend is something which defines the popularity of any Language. SCALA language seems to be pretty maintained for a period of time and has a wide list of active followers.

To gain more insights into its popularity and interest over time, let’s have a look using GOOGLE Trends!

These graphs could be used to get better insights where the consistency of Scala can be seen very easily. Apparently, according to some surveys, the demand for Scala developers is being increased in the last few years.

Scala v/s Java –

Scala and Java, comparing them both where Java is parent language Scala is relatively new. However, the fact is both languages are popular for developers worldwide. Let’s try to compare both on some factors –

1. Code Length –
   Scala code is much concise comparing to Java. Even, the code written in Java could be approx double of length the code in Scala.
   
2. Learning Track –
   It is believed that Scala is bit harder to learn due to it’s conciseness and tricky/confusing syntax. Thus, comparing it to Java, Java is pretty easy to learn.
   
3. Readability –
   As, Scala is more concise, nested code and have confusing syntax, makes it less readable whereas Java has fine readability.
   
4. Lazy Evaluation –
   Scala has a very remarkable feature Lazy Evaluation that defers time-consuming computation, until is necessary which is not available in Java.

Scala v/s Python –

So, anyone willing to do clustering programming, data engineering, data science, or big data must be thinking of Scala or Python. Let’s compare both on some params –

1. Performance –
   Python is dynamically typed, whereas Scala is statically types, and uses JVM, thus it runs 20x faster than Python.
   
2. Platform –
   Python interfaces with OS calls and libraries, thus has many interpreters. Scala uses JVM, hence source code is compiled to byte code before getting executed.
   
3. Concurrency –
   Python supports heavy weight process forking, but has no proper multi-threading concept. On the other hand, Scala has rich set of reactive cores and asynchronous libraries making it a better choice for implementing concurrency.
   
4. Advanced Features –
   Python has extensively rich set of libraries when it comes to Machine Learning, Deep Learning, AI, natural language processing while Scala has Akka, as rich set of modules.

Conclusion –

So, in this blog we have discussed about the need of Scala, the reason why one should pursue it to elevate and leverage their proficiency. We also discussed the trends of Scala using Google Trend and last compared it with Java (because it is parent language of Scala) and Python (One of the most trending languages).