Why Scala is Taking Over the Big Data World

Dean Wampler from Typesafe

Why Scala is Taking Over the Big Data World

Users of Big (and not so Big) Data roughly divide into three groups, developers like us, traditional data analysts, and a hybrid called data scientists. The analysts prefer SQL, SAS, and similar, traditional tools. The scientists (mostly statisticians, really) prefer Python and R, with Julia emerging. The Developers started with Java, but they are being seduced by Scala, because it offers ideal tools for data-centric applications.

This talk explains why data-centric applications are driving Scala adoption. Scala already provides these essentials:

• Expressive DSLs.* The JVM.* Actors for Reactive applications.* Functional combinators.

We'll examine code examples from the following tools:

• Scalding and Summingbird - for Hadoop and Storm.* Spark and H2O - the Next Generation...* Spire and Algebird - Mathematics.

Finally, we'll discuss what's missing and what's ahead.

Dean Wampler is the Big Data Architect for Typesafe. He builds scalable, distributed, "Big Data" applications using Spark, Hadoop, and other tools. He is the author of "Programming Scala, Second Edition", the co-author of "Programming Hive", and the author of "Functional Programming for Java Developers", all from O'Reilly. Dean is a contributor to several open-source projects and he is the co-organizer of several technology conferences and Chicago-based user groups. Dean can be found on twitter, @deanwampler.

Food at 6pm, presentation around 6:30.

Thanks to Typesafe for sponsoring and DotLoop for hosting.