Commercial Functional Programming with Scala Study Group

In order to promote purely functional programming in Scala, especially within Los Angeles and surrounding areas (but not limited to them), Data Science is leading a study group that starts with the basics of the Scala language. Scala is one of the most commercially successful programming languages in which functional programming is not only possible, but it is actively supported by language features, popular libraries such as Shapeless and Cats, and many prominent advocates of functional programming.

The language, however, is a complex beast to master — requiring knowledge of object-oriented programming, parametric polymorphism, higher-order functions, higher-kinded types, mutable and immutable data, and much more. Moreover, given the breadth of the Scala programming language, it is not easy to see which of the possible ways of using Scala result in the most production-worthy, readable, and composable functional code.

If you join at the beginning of the study group, no prior experience in Scala or static type systems is required, and the group's first few weeks will be especially friendly to those looking to land their first job as a commercial Scala engineer.

We will start the study group with the following books:

• Essential Scala (http://underscore.io/books/essential-scala/)

• Functional Programming in Scala (https://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Scala-Paul-Chiusano/dp/1617290653)

The cost for both books is <$100, and that is the only fee associated with participating in the study group. If you cannot afford this fee, please reach out and we'll find a way to cover the cost.

The group will meet once a week (remote-friendly!) on Wednesdays, where we will review the prior week's material, assist you in completing the tutorials, and introduce the next week's material. You should expect to spend a about 5 hours a week completing exercises and improving your understanding of the presented material.

The homepage for the advanced portion of the course is here: https://ds12.github.io/scala-class/ (https://ds12.github.io/scala-class/.), and we will be posting lecture videos on our youtube channel. To organize participation in the study group, we will be using a private channel in the DS12Residency Slack account. If you would like access, please email Robin through this meetup group.