Chapter 3. Understanding the Scala Ecosystem

Learning a new language also means getting acquainted with a new ecosystem of frameworks and tools. The good news is, in Scala, we can largely inherit the very rich and mature set of available tools and libraries from Java. In this chapter, we are going to cover the major novelties and additions to the existing ecosystem that we, as Java developers, are already familiar with.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Code editing environments—also known as IDEs

• SBT—a tool specific to Scala to build, test, and execute code

• Utilities as plugins to SBT to integrate with the Java ecosystem

• Scala Worksheets—a novel approach to interactive programming

• Working with HTTP and interacting with external web-based services, including the introduction of "for comprehensions"—a useful Scala construct

• Typesafe Activator—a convenient tool to bootstrap projects quickly

• Using Scala for scripting