On Wednesday of last week, an early access edition of Programming in Scala went on sale. This book is an effort by Martin Odersky, myself, and Bill Venners to introduce programmers to Scala. The full version should go out in May 2008, but people who buy now can go ahead and download preprints in PDF format.
Scala is a great language, letting you program in both functional and object-oriented styles on the Java VM. If you like the Java ecosystem, but you think Java could be improved, then Scala will interest you.
Personally, I have had a wonderful time being involved with Scala. The people are great, and it is exciting to help move advanced programming language ideas into a mainstream-accessible language. This book is our three's effort to share that joy with other programmers.
Here is the book's summary:
Scala is an object-oriented programming language for the Java Virtual Machine. In addition to being object-oriented, Scala is also a functional language, and combines the best approaches to OO and functional programming.
In Italian, Scala means a stairway, or steps—indeed, Scala lets you step up to a programming environment that incorporates some of the best recent thinking in programming language design while also letting you use all your existing Java code.
Artima is very pleased to publish the first book on Scala, written by the designer of the language, Martin Odersky. Co-authored by Lex Spoon and Bill Venners this book takes a step-by-step tutorial approach to teaching you Scala. Starting with the fundamental elements of the language, Programming in Scala introduces functional programming from the practitioner's perspective, and describes advanced language features that can make you a better, more productive developer.