Scala For the Impatient: teaches the idioms?

[Will Myers]

Is this book enough to start writing effective, idiomatic Scala? I have the Java 8 version and it's quite short and encourages the reader to go and investigate themselves to answer the quiz questions, does this follow a similar pattern?

[Cay Horstmann]

1) The book absolutey aims to teach you idiomatic Scala. The caveat is that it's my idea of idiomatic Scala--clear and concise, but not cryptic.

James Gosling famously said that Java is a "blue collar language". It's verbose, there is generally one right way of doing things, and it doesn't try to be clever. Scala is much more "scalable"--coding idioms range from blue collar to propeller head. I try to strike a reasonable balance. I think that's what most mainstream Scala programmers do as well.

2) Yes, there are exercises.

Over 20 years ago, when Gary and I wrote Core Java, the publisher said sternly: "Hey you two college professors. No section numbers. No exercises. This isn't a college book."

I think that was wrong. Readers love the exercises. Do them, and don't cheat by googling the solution :-)