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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Needs better editing, organization, insights., July 31, 2009
This review is from: Beginning Scala (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)
Frankly I am puzzled by the glowing reviews of this book. While I have found it helpful for getting started on a few points, the elements that threw me off track or had me reaching for other resources made getting through the volume difficult.
On the whole, the book feels to me as if it had been rather casually assembled from a series of notes or perhaps blog entry passages. While I understand the book is posed as an interactive, exploratory guide, there are several cases where an example using an unfamiliar language element is explained several pages later as if being introduced for the first time. There are other cases where a concept is explained several times as if starting over, which makes the "tour" seem ill-organized.
The first major code example is a huge leap from the starter lines. It introduces at once not only several major concepts, but also a few economies of expression that are made possible in Scala. It was so much stuff all in one place, and very early on, that I wasn't at all sure what to focus on. I spent a great deal of my time, after reading through once, trying to piece together what there was to learn from this guide. I have also far more questions about the language and its use than I started with -- a good thing in many respects -- but many of my questions start with whether I've understood a given point correctly.
Like the author, I lack any formal training in functional programming, so my knowledge gap may be wider than the average interested reader. As a teacher myself, however, I am convinced that a beginning guide can and should be systematic without sacrificing an interactive style. Key concepts should have some introductory text before applying several of them in one go in a dense piece of code. I certainly don't doubt the author's abilities and desire to inform others well, but I had to work a lot harder than I expected to get what I wanted from this guide.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A humane introduction to Scala, May 26, 2009
This review is from: Beginning Scala (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)
Everything that "Beginning Scala"' sets out to do, it does well. Still need to be convinced that Scala is relevant to your programming future? Chapter 1 makes the most convincing case of it that I have seen, leveraging not just the author's knowledge of this relatively new language but his substantial and diverse experience in software, developing for more platforms and within more paradigms than most of us have heard of. This experience is evident throughout, with examples that range from the whimsical (yet instructive) to the eerily familiar. The title of Chapter 4 will ring a few bells for anyone who has programmed in Java professionally: "Fun with Functions, and Never Having to Close That JDBC Connection". (Scala, where were you in 2002?)
Just as important as the information contained is how it's presented. "Beginning Scala" strikes a balance between conversational and serious that makes it particularly approachable to beginners and, I would wager, disarming to Scala skeptics. The editors should be commended for taking a chance and allowing a tone that, for many technical authors that attempt it, can come off as cheeky. But in this book Pollak's voice adds a convincing dash of passion to the work that (as much as is possible in programming literature!) makes it a page-turner.
To learn Scala, there's a hard way and an easy way. This is the easy way.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beginning Scala is not just for beginners, August 17, 2009
This review is from: Beginning Scala (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)
(Adapted from a similar blog article I wrote, at [...])
I picked up a copy of Beginning Scala a week ago, and I'm finding it to be a useful complement to Programming in Scala. I find, when I'm learning a new language, that different approaches fire different synapses. Programming in Scala (sometimes called "the staircase book", for its front cover) is an in-depth book that covers Scala in great detail. It is, in every way, the K & R of Scala. I have a copy of Programming in Scala; I've read it, and I continue to refer to it and re-read parts of it.
Now that I'm about halfway through Beginning Scala, I'm finding that it's pointing out some new tricks, tricks I missed in the staircase book and on the mailing lists. I'm certain I could find these tricks find by poring back over the staircase book, but Pollak's clear, concise and highly practical approach makes them readily apparent and easy to grasp.
I've been using Scala for several months now, and it's not the first programming language I've taught myself (not by a long shot). It is a complex and powerful language, and I cannot learn all its tricks from one book, or even from reading alone. I'll be learning it and refining my use of it for awhile yet. Alternate viewpoints help, and although Beginning Scala is ostensibly targeted at Scala beginners, it assumes the reader is not a programming beginner or an idiot. It's written in a concise, practical style that contrasts nicely with the style of Programming in Scala. The different approaches the two books take hammer home many of the concepts of Scala in a way that either book, by itself, does not.
Neither book has made it to my bookshelf yet, because I keep referring to both of them. For me, that's proof enough of their value. If you're just learning Scala, or if you've been using it for awhile, you'll likely find great value in Beginning Scala.
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