User:Scala Cats

Scala is a general-purpose programming language providing support for functional programming and a strong static type system. Designed to be concise, many of Scala's design decisions aimed to address criticisms of Java.

Scala source code is intended to be compiled to Java bytecode, so that the resulting executable code runs on a Java virtual machine. Scala provides language interoperability with Java, so that libraries written in both languages may be referenced directly in Scala or Java code. Like Java, Scala is object-oriented, and uses a curly-brace syntax reminiscent of the C programming language. Unlike Java, Scala has many features of functional programming languages like Scheme, Standard ML and Haskell, including currying, type inference, immutability, lazy evaluation, and pattern matching. It also has an advanced type system supporting algebraic data types, covariance and contravariance, higher-order types (but not higher-rank types), and anonymous types. Other features of Scala not present in Java include operator overloading, optional parameters, named parameters, raw strings, and no checked exceptions.

The name Scala is a portmanteau of scalable and language.

History
The design of Scala started in 2001 at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) by Martin Odersky. It followed on from work on Funnel, a programming language combining ideas from functional programming and Petri nets. Odersky formerly worked on Generic Java, and javac, Sun's Java compiler.

After an internal release in late 2003, Scala was released publicly in early 2004 on the Java platform, A second version (v2.0) followed in March 2006.

Although Scala had extensive support for functional programming from its inception, Java remained a mostly object oriented language until the inclusion of lambda expressions with Java 8 in 2014.

On 17 January 2011 the Scala team won a five-year research grant of over €2.3 million from the European Research Council. On 12 May 2011, Odersky and collaborators launched Typesafe Inc. (later renamed Lightbend Inc.), a company to provide commercial support, training, and services for Scala. Typesafe received a $3 million investment in 2011 from Greylock Partners.

Platforms and license
Scala runs on the Java platform (Java virtual machine) and is compatible with existing Java programs. As Android applications are typically written in Java and translated from Java bytecode into Dalvik bytecode (which may be further translated to native machine code during installation) when packaged, Scala's Java compatibility makes it well suited to Android development, more so when a functional approach is preferred.

The reference Scala software distribution, including compiler and libraries, is released under a BSD license.

Other Compilers and Targets
Scala.js is a Scala compiler that compiles to JavaScript, making it possible to write Scala programs that can run in web browsers.

Scala Native is a Scala compiler that targets the LLVM compiler infrastructure to create executable code that uses a lightweight managed runtime which utilizes the Boehm garbage collector. The project is led by Denys Shabalin and had its first release, 0.1, on 14 March 2017. Development of Scala Native began in 2015 with a goal of being faster than Just-in-time compilation for the JVM by eliminating the initial runtime compilation of code and also providing the ability to call native routines directly.

A reference Scala compiler targeting the .NET Framework and its Common Language Runtime was released in June 2004, but was officially dropped in 2012.

"Hello World" example
The Hello World program written in Scala has this form:

Unlike the stand-alone Hello World application for Java, there is no class declaration and nothing is declared to be static; a singleton object created with the object keyword is used instead.

When the program is stored in file HelloWorld.scala, the user compiles it with the command $ scalac HelloWorld.scala and runs it with $ scala HelloWorld

This is analogous to the process for compiling and running Java code. Indeed, Scala's compiling and executing model is identical to that of Java, making it compatible with Java build tools such as Apache Ant.

A shorter version of the "Hello World" Scala program is:

Scala includes interactive shell and scripting support. Saved in a file named, this can be run as a script with no prior compiling using: $ scala HelloWorld2.scala Commands can also be entered directly into the Scala interpreter, using the option -e: $ scala -e 'println("Hello, World!")'

Expressions can be entered interactively in the REPL:

Basic example
The following example shows the differences between Java and Scala syntax:

Some syntactic differences in this code are:
 * Scala does not require semicolons to end statements.
 * Value types are capitalized:  instead of.
 * Parameter and return types follow, as in Pascal, rather than precede as in C.
 * Methods must be preceded by.
 * Local or class variables must be preceded by  (indicates an immutable variable) or   (indicates a mutable variable).
 * The  operator is unnecessary in a function (although allowed); the value of the last executed statement or expression is normally the function's value.
 * Instead of the Java cast operator, Scala uses  , or a specialized function such as   or.
 * Instead of Java's, Scala uses.
 * Function or method  can also be called as just  ; method   can also be called as just  ; and method   can also be called as just.

These syntactic relaxations are designed to allow support for domain-specific languages.

Some other basic syntactic differences:
 * Array references are written like function calls, e.g.  rather than  . (Internally in Scala, both arrays and functions are conceptualized as kinds of mathematical mappings from one object to another.)
 * Generic types are written as e.g.  rather than Java's.
 * Instead of the pseudo-type, Scala has the actual singleton class   (see below).

Example with classes
The following example contrasts the definition of classes in Java and Scala.

The code above shows some of the conceptual differences between Java and Scala's handling of classes:
 * Scala has no static variables or methods. Instead, it has singleton objects, which are essentially classes with only one object in the class. Singleton objects are declared using  instead of  . It is common to place static variables and methods in a singleton object with the same name as the class name, which is then known as a companion object. (The underlying class for the singleton object has a   appended. Hence, for   with companion object , under the hood there's a class   containing the companion object's code, and one object of this class is created, using the singleton pattern.)
 * In place of constructor parameters, Scala has class parameters, which are placed on the class, similar to parameters to a function. When declared with a  or   modifier, fields are also defined with the same name, and automatically initialized from the class parameters. (Under the hood, external access to public fields always goes through accessor (getter) and mutator (setter) methods, which are automatically created. The accessor function has the same name as the field, which is why it's unnecessary in the above example to explicitly declare accessor methods.) Note that alternative constructors can also be declared, as in Java. Code that would go into the default constructor (other than initializing the member variables) goes directly at class level.
 * Default visibility in Scala is.

Features (with reference to Java)
Scala has the same compiling model as Java and C#, namely separate compiling and dynamic class loading, so that Scala code can call Java libraries.

Scala's operational characteristics are the same as Java's. The Scala compiler generates byte code that is nearly identical to that generated by the Java compiler. In fact, Scala code can be decompiled to readable Java code, with the exception of certain constructor operations. To the Java virtual machine (JVM), Scala code and Java code are indistinguishable. The only difference is one extra runtime library,.

Scala adds a large number of features compared with Java, and has some fundamental differences in its underlying model of expressions and types, which make the language theoretically cleaner and eliminate several corner cases in Java. From the Scala perspective, this is practically important because several added features in Scala are also available in C#. Examples include:

Syntactic flexibility
As mentioned above, Scala has a good deal of syntactic flexibility, compared with Java. The following are some examples:
 * Semicolons are unnecessary; lines are automatically joined if they begin or end with a token that cannot normally come in this position, or if there are unclosed parentheses or brackets.
 * Any method can be used as an infix operator, e.g.  and   are equivalent. In fact, arithmetic operators like   and   are treated just like any other methods, since function names are allowed to consist of sequences of arbitrary symbols (with a few exceptions made for things like parens, brackets and braces that must be handled specially); the only special treatment that such symbol-named methods undergo concerns the handling of precedence.
 * Methods  and   have syntactic short forms.  —where   is a value (singleton object or class instance)—is short for , and   is short for  . Similarly,   is short for  , and   is short for  . This is used for collection classes and extends to many other cases, such as STM cells.
 * Scala distinguishes between no-parens and empty-parens  methods. When calling an empty-parens method, the parentheses may be omitted, which is useful when calling into Java libraries that do not know this distinction, e.g., using   instead of  . By convention, a method should be defined with empty-parens when it performs side effects.
 * Method names ending in colon expect the argument on the left-hand-side and the receiver on the right-hand-side. For example, the   is the same as , the first form corresponding visually to the result (a list with first element 4 and second element 2).
 * Class body variables can be transparently implemented as separate getter and setter methods. For, an implementation may be object Foo extends FooLike { private var x = 0; def bar = x; def bar_=(value: Int) { x = value $)$} } }. The call site will still be able to use a concise.
 * The use of curly braces instead of parentheses is allowed in method calls. This allows pure library implementations of new control structures. For example,  looks as if   was a language defined keyword, but really is just a method taking a thunk argument. Methods that take thunks or functions often place these in a second parameter list, allowing to mix parentheses and curly braces syntax:   is the same as  . The curly braces variant allows the expression to span multiple lines.
 * For-expressions (explained further down) can accommodate any type that defines monadic methods such as,   and.

By themselves, these may seem like questionable choices, but collectively they serve the purpose of allowing domain-specific languages to be defined in Scala without needing to extend the compiler. For example, Erlang's special syntax for sending a message to an actor, i.e.  can be (and is) implemented in a Scala library without needing language extensions.

Unified type system
Java makes a sharp distinction between primitive types (e.g.  and  ) and reference types (any class). Only reference types are part of the inheritance scheme, deriving from. In Scala, however, all types inherit from a top-level class, whose immediate children are   (value types, such as   and  ) and   (reference types, as in Java). This means that the Java distinction between primitive types and boxed types (e.g.  vs.  ) is not present in Scala; boxing and unboxing is completely transparent to the user. Scala 2.10 allows for new value types to be defined by the user.

For-expressions
Instead of the Java "foreach" loops for looping through an iterator, Scala has a much more powerful concept of -expressions. These are similar to list comprehensions in languages such as Haskell, or a combination of list comprehensions and generator expressions in Python. For-expressions using the  keyword allow a new collection to be generated by iterating over an existing one, returning a new collection of the same type. They are translated by the compiler into a series of,   and   calls. Where  is not used, the code approximates to an imperative-style loop, by translating to.

A simple example is:

The result of running it is the following vector:



(Note that the expression  is not special syntax. The method   is rather defined in the standard Scala library as an extension method on integers, using a technique known as implicit conversions that allows new methods to be added to existing types.)

A more complex example of iterating over a map is:

Expression  is an example of pattern matching (see below). Iterating over a map returns a set of key-value tuples, and pattern-matching allows the tuples to easily be destructured into separate variables for the key and value. Similarly, the result of the comprehension also returns key-value tuples, which are automatically built back up into a map because the source object (from the variable ) is a map. Note that if  instead held a list, set, array or other collection of tuples, exactly the same code above would yield a new collection of the same type.

Functional tendencies
While supporting all of the object-oriented features available in Java (and in fact, augmenting them in various ways), Scala also provides a large number of capabilities that are normally found only in functional programming languages. Together, these features allow Scala programs to be written in an almost completely functional style, and also allow functional and object-oriented styles to be mixed.

Examples are:
 * No distinction between statements and expressions
 * Type inference
 * Anonymous functions with capturing semantics (i.e., closures)
 * Immutable variables and objects
 * Lazy evaluation
 * Delimited continuations (since 2.8)
 * Higher-order functions
 * Nested functions
 * Currying
 * Pattern matching
 * Algebraic data types (through case classes)
 * Tuples

Everything is an expression
Unlike C or Java, but similar to languages such as Lisp, Scala makes no distinction between statements and expressions. All statements are in fact expressions that evaluate to some value. Functions that would be declared as returning  in C or Java, and statements like   that logically do not return a value, are in Scala considered to return the type , which is a singleton type, with only one object of that type. Functions and operators that never return at all (e.g. the  operator or a function that always exits non-locally using an exception) logically have return type , a special type containing no objects; that is, a bottom type, i.e. a subclass of every possible type. (This in turn makes type  compatible with every type, allowing type inference to function correctly.)

Similarly, an  "statement" is actually an expression, which produces a value, i.e. the result of evaluating one of the two branches. This means that such a block of code can be inserted wherever an expression is desired, obviating the need for a ternary operator in Scala:

For similar reasons,  statements are unnecessary in Scala, and in fact are discouraged. As in Lisp, the last expression in a block of code is the value of that block of code, and if the block of code is the body of a function, it will be returned by the function.

To make it clear that all expressions are functions, even methods that return  are written with an equals sign

or equivalently (with type inference, and omitting the unnecessary braces):

Type inference
Due to type inference, the type of variables, function return values, and many other expressions can typically be omitted, as the compiler can deduce it. Examples are  (for an immutable, constant variable or immutable object) or   (for a variable whose value can later be changed). Type inference in Scala is essentially local, in contrast to the more global Hindley-Milner algorithm used in Haskell, ML and other more purely functional languages. This is done to facilitate object-oriented programming. The result is that certain types still need to be declared (most notably, function parameters, and the return types of recursive functions), e.g.

or (with a return type declared for a recursive function)

Anonymous functions
In Scala, functions are objects, and a convenient syntax exists for specifying anonymous functions. An example is the expression, which specifies a function with one parameter, that compares its argument to see if it is less than 2. It is equivalent to the Lisp form. Note that neither the type of  nor the return type need be explicitly specified, and can generally be inferred by type inference; but they can be explicitly specified, e.g. as   or even.

Anonymous functions behave as true closures in that they automatically capture any variables that are lexically available in the environment of the enclosing function. Those variables will be available even after the enclosing function returns, and unlike in the case of Java's anonymous inner classes do not need to be declared as final. (It is even possible to modify such variables if they are mutable, and the modified value will be available the next time the anonymous function is called.)

An even shorter form of anonymous function uses placeholder variables: For example, the following:

can be written more concisely as

or even

Immutability
Scala enforces a distinction between immutable (unmodifiable, read-only) variables, whose value cannot be changed once assigned, and mutable variables, which can be changed. A similar distinction is made between immutable and mutable objects. The distinction must be made when a variable is declared: Immutable variables are declared with  while mutable variables use. Similarly, all of the collection objects (container types) in Scala, e.g. linked lists, arrays, sets and hash tables, are available in mutable and immutable variants, with the immutable variant considered the more basic and default implementation. The immutable variants are "persistent" data types in that they create a new object that encloses the old object and adds the new member(s); this is similar to how linked lists are built up in Lisp, where elements are prepended by creating a new "cons" cell with a pointer to the new element (the "head") and the old list (the "tail"). This allows for very easy concurrency — no locks are needed as no shared objects are ever modified. Immutable structures are also constructed efficiently, in the sense that modified instances reuses most of old instance data and unused/unreferenced parts are collected by GC.

Lazy (non-strict) evaluation
Evaluation is strict ("eager") by default. In other words, Scala evaluates expressions as soon as they are available, rather than as needed. However, you can declare a variable non-strict ("lazy") with the  keyword, meaning that the code to produce the variable's value will not be evaluated until the first time the variable is referenced. Non-strict collections of various types also exist (such as the type, a non-strict linked list), and any collection can be made non-strict with the   method. Non-strict collections provide a good semantic fit to things like server-produced data, where the evaluation of the code to generate later elements of a list (that in turn triggers a request to a server, possibly located somewhere else on the web) only happens when the elements are actually needed.

Tail recursion
Functional programming languages commonly provide tail call optimization to allow for extensive use of recursion without stack overflow problems. Limitations in Java bytecode complicate tail call optimization on the JVM. In general, a function that calls itself with a tail call can be optimized, but mutually recursive functions cannot. Trampolines have been suggested as a workaround. Trampoline support has been provided by the Scala library with the object  since Scala 2.8.0 (released 14 July 2010). A function may optionally be annotated with, in which case it will not compile unless it is tail recursive.

Case classes and pattern matching
Scala has built-in support for pattern matching, which can be thought of as a more sophisticated, extensible version of a switch statement, where arbitrary data types can be matched (rather than just simple types like integers, booleans and strings), including arbitrary nesting. A special type of class known as a case class is provided, which includes automatic support for pattern matching and can be used to model the algebraic data types used in many functional programming languages. (From the perspective of Scala, a case class is simply a normal class for which the compiler automatically adds certain behaviors that could also be provided manually, e.g., definitions of methods providing for deep comparisons and hashing, and destructuring a case class on its constructor parameters during pattern matching.)

An example of a definition of the quicksort algorithm using pattern matching is this:

The idea here is that we partition a list into the elements less than a pivot and the elements not less, recursively sort each part, and paste the results together with the pivot in between. This uses the same divide-and-conquer strategy of mergesort and other fast sorting algorithms.

The  operator is used to do pattern matching on the object stored in. Each  expression is tried in turn to see if it will match, and the first match determines the result. In this case,  only matches the literal object , but   matches a non-empty list, and simultaneously destructures the list according to the pattern given. In this case, the associated code will have access to a local variable named  holding the head of the list, and another variable   holding the tail of the list. Note that these variables are read-only, and are semantically very similar to variable bindings established using the  operator in Lisp and Scheme.

Pattern matching also happens in local variable declarations. In this case, the return value of the call to  is a tuple — in this case, two lists. (Tuples differ from other types of containers, e.g. lists, in that they are always of fixed size and the elements can be of differing types — although here they are both the same.) Pattern matching is the easiest way of fetching the two parts of the tuple.

The form  is a declaration of an anonymous function with a placeholder variable; see the section above on anonymous functions.

The list operators  (which adds an element onto the beginning of a list, similar to   in Lisp and Scheme) and   (which appends two lists together, similar to   in Lisp and Scheme) both appear. Despite appearances, there is nothing "built-in" about either of these operators. As specified above, any string of symbols can serve as function name, and a method applied to an object can be written "infix"-style without the period or parentheses. The line above as written:

could also be written thus:

in more standard method-call notation. (Methods that end with a colon are right-associative and bind to the object to the right.)

Partial functions
In the pattern-matching example above, the body of the  operator is a partial function, which consists of a series of   expressions, with the first matching expression prevailing, similar to the body of a switch statement. Partial functions are also used in the exception-handling portion of a  statement:

Finally, a partial function can be used alone, and the result of calling it is equivalent to doing a  over it. For example, the prior code for quicksort can be written thus:

Here a read-only variable is declared whose type is a function from lists of integers to lists of integers, and bind it to a partial function. (Note that the single parameter of the partial function is never explicitly declared or named.) However, we can still call this variable exactly as if it were a normal function:

Object-oriented extensions
Scala is a pure object-oriented language in the sense that every value is an object. Data types and behaviors of objects are described by classes and traits. Class abstractions are extended by subclassing and by a flexible mixin-based composition mechanism to avoid the problems of multiple inheritance.

Traits are Scala's replacement for Java's interfaces. Interfaces in Java versions under 8 are highly restricted, able only to contain abstract function declarations. This has led to criticism that providing convenience methods in interfaces is awkward (the same methods must be reimplemented in every implementation), and extending a published interface in a backwards-compatible way is impossible. Traits are similar to mixin classes in that they have nearly all the power of a regular abstract class, lacking only class parameters (Scala's equivalent to Java's constructor parameters), since traits are always mixed in with a class. The  operator behaves specially in traits, allowing traits to be chained using composition in addition to inheritance. The following example is a simple window system:

A variable may be declared thus:

The result of calling  is

In other words, the call to  first executed the code in   (the last trait mixed in), then (through the   calls) threaded back through the other mixed-in traits and eventually to the code in , even though none of the traits inherited from one another. This is similar to the decorator pattern, but is more concise and less error-prone, as it doesn't require explicitly encapsulating the parent window, explicitly forwarding functions whose implementation isn't changed, or relying on run-time initialization of entity relationships. In other languages, a similar effect could be achieved at compile-time with a long linear chain of implementation inheritance, but with the disadvantage compared to Scala that one linear inheritance chain would have to be declared for each possible combination of the mix-ins.

Expressive type system
Scala is equipped with an expressive static type system that mostly enforces the safe and coherent use of abstractions. The type system is, however, not sound. In particular, the type system supports:
 * Classes and abstract types as object members
 * Structural types
 * Path-dependent types
 * Compound types
 * Explicitly typed self references
 * Generic classes
 * Polymorphic methods
 * Upper and lower type bounds
 * Variance
 * Annotation
 * Views

Scala is able to infer types by usage. This makes most static type declarations optional. Static types need not be explicitly declared unless a compiler error indicates the need. In practice, some static type declarations are included for the sake of code clarity.

Type enrichment
A common technique in Scala, known as "enrich my library" (originally termed as "pimp my library" by Martin Odersky in 2006; though concerns were raised about this phrasing due to its negative connotation and immaturity ), allows new methods to be used as if they were added to existing types. This is similar to the C# concept of extension methods but more powerful, because the technique is not limited to adding methods and can, for instance, be used to implement new interfaces. In Scala, this technique involves declaring an implicit conversion from the type "receiving" the method to a new type (typically, a class) that wraps the original type and provides the additional method. If a method cannot be found for a given type, the compiler automatically searches for any applicable implicit conversions to types that provide the method in question.

This technique allows new methods to be added to an existing class using an add-on library such that only code that imports the add-on library gets the new functionality, and all other code is unaffected.

The following example shows the enrichment of type  with methods   and  :

Importing the members of  brings the implicit conversion to extension class   into scope.

Concurrency
Scala standard library includes support for the actor model, in addition to the standard Java concurrency APIs. Lightbend Inc. provides a platform that includes Akka, a separate open source framework that provides actor-based concurrency. Akka actors may be distributed or combined with software transactional memory (transactors). Alternative communicating sequential processes (CSP) implementations for channel-based message passing are Communicating Scala Objects, or simply via JCSP.

An Actor is like a thread instance with a mailbox. It can be created by, overriding the   method to receive messages and using the   (exclamation point) method to send a message. The following example shows an EchoServer that can receive messages and then print them.

Scala also comes with built-in support for data-parallel programming in the form of Parallel Collections integrated into its Standard Library since version 2.9.0.

The following example shows how to use Parallel Collections to improve performance.

Besides actor support and data-parallelism, Scala also supports asynchronous programming with Futures and Promises, software transactional memory, and event streams.

Cluster computing
The most well-known open source cluster computing solution, written in Scala, is Apache Spark. Additionally, Apache Kafka, the publish-subscribe message queue popular with Spark and other stream processing technologies, is written in Scala.

Testing
There are several ways to test code in Scala. ScalaTest supports multiple testing styles and can integrate with Java-based testing frameworks. ScalaCheck is a library similar to Haskell's QuickCheck. specs2 is a library for writing executable software specifications. ScalaMock provides support for testing high-order and curried functions. JUnit and TestNG are popular testing frameworks written in Java.

Comparison with other JVM languages
Scala is often compared with Groovy and Clojure, two other programming languages also using the JVM. Substantial differences between these languages are found in the type system, in the extent to which each language supports object-oriented and functional programming, and in the similarity of their syntax to the syntax of Java.

Scala is statically typed, while both Groovy and Clojure are dynamically typed. This makes the type system more complex and difficult to understand but allows almost all type errors to be caught at compile-time and can result in significantly faster execution. By contrast, dynamic typing requires more testing to ensure program correctness and is generally slower in order to allow greater programming flexibility and simplicity. Regarding speed differences, current versions of Groovy and Clojure allow for optional type annotations to help programs avoid the overhead of dynamic typing in cases where types are practically static. This overhead is further reduced when using recent versions of the JVM, which has been enhanced with an invoke dynamic instruction for methods that are defined with dynamically typed arguments. These advances reduce the speed gap between static and dynamic typing, although a statically typed language, like Scala, is still the preferred choice when execution efficiency is very important.

Regarding programming paradigms, Scala inherits the object-oriented model of Java and extends it in various ways. Groovy, while also strongly object-oriented, is more focused in reducing verbosity. In Clojure, object-oriented programming is deemphasised with functional programming being the main strength of the language. Scala also has many functional programming facilities, including features found in advanced functional languages like Haskell, and tries to be agnostic between the two paradigms, letting the developer choose between the two paradigms or, more frequently, some combination thereof.

Regarding syntax similarity with Java, Scala inherits much of Java's syntax, as is the case with Groovy. Clojure on the other hand follows the Lisp syntax, which is different in both appearance and philosophy. However, learning Scala is also considered difficult because of its many advanced features. This is not the case with Groovy, despite its also being a feature-rich language, mainly because it was designed to be mainly a scripting language.

Language rankings
Scala was voted the most popular JVM scripting language at the 2012 JavaOne conference.

, all JVM-based languages (Scala, Groovy, Clojure) are significantly less popular than the original Java language, which is usually ranked first or second, and which is also simultaneously evolving over time.

File:Diagram_of_Job_trends_of_Scala,_Groovy,_Clojure_and_Kotlin_by_Indeed.pngIndeed.com job trends: Scala and related technologies

The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings, as of June 2016 placed Scala 14th, based on a position in terms of number of GitHub projects and in terms of number of questions tagged on Stack Overflow. (Groovy and Clojure were both in 20th place.) Here, Scala is shown somewhat between a first-tier group of languages (including, C, Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.), and ahead of a second-tier group.

Another measure, the Popularity of Programming Language Index which tracks searches for language tutorials ranked Scala 15th in July 2016 with a small upward trend, making it the most popular JVM-based language after Java.

As of January 2016, the TIOBE index of programming language popularity shows Scala in 30th place (as measured by internet search engine rankings and similar publication-counting), but–as mentioned under "Bugs &amp; Change Requests"–TIOBE is aware of issues with its methodology of using search terms which might not be commonly used in some programming language communities. In this ranking Scala is ahead of functional languages Haskell (39th), Erlang (35rd) and Clojure (>50), but below Java (1st).

The ThoughtWorks Technology Radar, which is an opinion based half-yearly report of a group of senior technologists, recommends Scala adoption in its languages and frameworks category.

According to Indeed.com Job Trends, Scala demand has been rapidly increasing since 2010, trending ahead of Clojure and Groovy.

Companies

 * In April 2009, Twitter announced that it had switched large portions of its backend from Ruby to Scala and intended to convert the rest.
 * Gilt uses Scala and Play Framework.
 * Foursquare uses Scala and Lift.
 * SpinGo uses Scala and Akka.
 * Coursera uses Scala and Play Framework.
 * Apple Inc. uses Scala in certain teams, along with Java and the Play framework.
 * The Guardian newspaper's high-traffic website guardian.co.uk announced in April 2011 that it was switching from Java to Scala,
 * The New York Times revealed in 2014 that its internal content management system Blackbeard is built using Scala, Akka and Play.
 * The Huffington Post newspaper started to employ Scala as part of its contents delivery system Athena in 2013.
 * Swiss bank UBS approved Scala for general production usage.
 * The BitGold platform was built entirely on Scala and Play Framework.
 * LinkedIn uses the Scalatra microframework to power its Signal API.
 * Meetup uses Unfiltered toolkit for real-time APIs.
 * Remember the Milk uses Unfiltered toolkit, Scala and Akka for public API and real time updates.
 * Verizon seeking to make "a next generation framework" using Scala.
 * LeadIQ was built entirely on Scala, Akka and Play Framework.
 * Airbnb develops open source machine learning software "Aerosolve", written in Java and Scala.
 * Zalando moved its technology stack from Java to Scala and Play.
 * SoundCloud uses Scala for its back-end, employing technologies such as Finagle (micro services), Scalding and Spark (data processing).
 * Databricks uses Scala for the Apache Spark Big Data platform.
 * Morgan Stanley uses Scala extensively in their finance and asset-related projects.
 * There are teams within Google/Alphabet Inc. that use Scala, mostly due to acquisitions such as Firebase and Nest.
 * Walmart Canada Uses Scala for their back end platform.
 * x.ai uses Scala for their AI-driven Personal Assistant.
 * Duolingo uses Scala for their back-end module that generates lessons.

Criticism
In March 2015, former VP of the Platform Engineering group at Twitter Raffi Krikorian, stated he would not have chosen Scala in 2011 due to its learning curve. The same month, LinkedIn SVP Kevin Scott stated their decision to "minimize [their] dependence on Scala." In November 2011, Yammer moved away from Scala for reasons that included the learning curve for new team members and incompatibility from one version of the Scala compiler to the next.