Java vs Scala !!

Before going to start reading this post, if you are really want to learn Scala from scratch you can refer my previous Post as well, that is one them this Scala series.

Aim of this post :-

(Many developers are using Java for developing number of applications and Scala is a reference language of Java, Or you can say most of the feature has added in Scala from Java with extra flexibility, So we should have better understanding on both)

Scala programming language is a newer, very interesting language, with a lot of new features compared to Java. The reason Scala is interesting to Java programmers is, that Scala is compiled to run on the Java Virtual Machine. In other words, Scala is compiled into Java bytecodes. This also means that you can use all Java classes in your Scala code. Even the Java classes you have developed yourself. This makes a transition to Scala cheaper, since a lot of Java code can be reused.

Some of the new, interesting features in Scala are closures, functions as objects, traits,concurrency mechanisms inspired by Erlang, and its support for DSL’s (Domain Specific Languages).

Scala is compiled into Java Byte Code which is executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This means that Scala and Java have a common runtime platform.The Scala interpreter runs your Scala code directly as it is, without you needing to compile it. The Scala interpreter may come in handy as a Scala script interpreter, a bit like a shell script interpreter on a Unix platform.

Scala Features:-

Scala has a set of features which differ from Java. Some of these are:

1. All types are objects.
   2. Type inference.
   3. Functions are objects.
   4. Domain specific language (DSL) support.
   5. Traits.
   6. Closures.
   7. Concurrency support inspired by Erlang.

We will discuss more one by one in my coming post !!

Differences between Scala and Java:-

1- First and Major difference you will notice between Scala and Java is succinct and concise code. Scala drastically reduces the number of lines from a Java application by making clever use of type inference, treating everything as an object, function passing, and several other features.

2- Scala is designed to express common programming patterns in an elegant, concise and typesafe way. The language itself encourage you to write code in immutable style, which makes applying concurrency and parallelism easily.

3- One of Scala’s cool feature is built-in lazy evaluation, which allows deferring time-consuming computation until absolutely needed and you can do this by using a keyword called “lazy”.

4- One more difference between Scala and Java is that Scala supports Operator overloading. You can overload any operator in Java and you can also create new operators for any type, but as you already know, Java doesn’t support Operator Overloading.

5 - Another major difference between Java and Scala is that functions are objects in Java. Scala treats any method or function as they are variables. When means, you can pass them around like Object. You might have seen the code, where one Scala function is accepting another function. In fact, this gives the language enormous power.

6 - The significant distinction between Scala and Java is a compact and concise code. In Scala, coding is lower to a variety of lines, which is not the cases about Java. The codes that is written in Java can be written in Scala in half the numbers of lines. Scala utilizes ‘type reasoning’ very cleverly to deal with everything as an object, pass the function, and several other functions.

7- The learning curve of the Scala vs java programming language is high as compared to that of Java. The coding in Scala can be extremely challenging to predict due to less coding. Also, the syntax in Scala is more complicated than Java.

8- Scala consists of nested coding is the(functions inside a function, inside of an object, inside a class) that makes the code less understandable than Java. Some of times, it improves clarity, but it can be really challenging if composed poorly.

9- Another major distinction between these two programming languages is that functions are nothing but the items in Java whereas, in Scala vs java functions vary.

10- Scala is not backward compatible, which means that code runs in the current version only. Java is backward suitable; it enables code to work on older and more recent versions likewise with no error.

Advantage of using Scala:-

• Scala is easy to learn for object-oriented programmers, (Java developers). It is becoming one of the popular languages in recent years.
• Scala offers first-class functions for users.
• Scala can be executed on JVM, thus paving the way for the interoperability with other languages.
• It is designed for applications that are concurrent, distributed, resilient, and message driven. It is one of the most demanding languages of this decade.
• It is concise, powerful language and can quickly grow according to the demand of its users.
• It is object-oriented and has a lot of functional programming features providing a lot of flexibility to the developers to code in a way they want.
• Scala offers many Duck Types.
• It has less boilerplate if you are coming from Java.
• The frameworks Lift and Play written in Scala are in the growth curve.

Advantages of Java:-

• Detailed documentation is available.
• A large pool of skilled developers available.
• Allows you to form standard programs and reusable code.
• It is a multi-threaded environment which allows you to perform many tasks at the same time in a program.
• Excellent performance.
• Huge array of 3rd party libraries.
• Easy to navigate libraries.

Disadvantages of Scala:-

• Scala offers very limited community presence.
• It is not the easily adaptable language.
• Offers very limited backward compatibility.

Disadvantages of Java:-

• Java has high memory and processing requirements. Therefore, hardware cost increases.
• No support for low-level programming constructs like pointers.
• You don’t have any control over garbage collection as Java does not provide functions like delete(), free().

Thanks for Reading this blog !!

Casey Botticello Favio Vázquez Ryan Fan Jose Marcial Portilla