Scala: workshop consultations

Question

I was invited to host a scala workshop for a PHP audience. Many of these people never had any contact with a functional programming language, so I was wondering how to implement them in such a way that they can make the most of it.

I heard that many people have difficulty understanding high-order functions, etc.

What are your impressions? I don’t want to scare them off with too advanced things, and I don’t want to kill them to death.

The workshop will be approximately 3 hours with the participation of about 10 people.

Thanks for your input.

Regards, raichoo

Answer 1

I suggest following some tips at Sneaking Scala in your organization .

But before that, make sure that you see the consequences of static type systems and how the output makes unnecessary type annotations unnecessary.

For programming functions, remember to define important things like clousures, lambdas (anonymous functions) and how they fit into Scala OO.

Answer 2

Take a look at these slides . I can’t say if they are the most suitable slides for a PHP audience, but I always thought that Jonas Boner got there with his presentations. You might want to integrate the topics covered here into the seminar, as they focus on the practical aspects of the language.

Answer 3

Programming Scala by Martin Odersky has a number of examples starting with an imperative style, and then going through the steps to make it functional.

It helps a lot if you are not used to functional programming to start with the “normal” code and translate it, instead of thinking right away.