Scala: coming to a course near you very soon

Java has been the default teaching language in computer science now for over a decade, and it served its purpose. But times have move on. Java is looking increasingly dated, but what is there to replace it? The answer is most likely Scala.

Why Scala? Because it ticks all the computer science boxes. Higher-order functions? Tick. Consistent object model? Tick. The static type system to end all static type systems? Tick. Call by name? Tick. Enough functional gloss to shut up the refugee mathematicians pure computer scientists? Tick.

Fair play to Martin Odersky. He's taken all the good bits from the last fifty-odd years of programming language design and – the hubris of it – managed to shoe-horn them into one surprisingly neat language.

And who could possible resist a language in which you can code infinitely long lists without having to resort to Haskell? Call by name, for heaven sake! How, since the passing of Algol, did we live without it? How cool is this:

class LazyList[T](h: T, t: => LazyList[T]) {
  def head = h
  def tail = t
}

implicit def lazyCons[T](h: T) =
  new {
    def :=> (t: => LazyList[T]): LazyList[T] =
      new LazyList(h, t)
  }

def zip[T, S](l1: LazyList[T], l2: LazyList[S]): LazyList[(T, S)] =
  (l1.head, l2.head) :=> zip(l1.tail, l2.tail)

def map[T, S](f: T => S, l: LazyList[T]): LazyList[S] =
  f(l.head) :=> map(f, l.tail)

def addPair(t: (Int, Int)) = t._1 + t._2

def fib: LazyList[Int] =
  1 :=> (1 :=> map(addPair, zip(fib, fib.tail)))

var l = fib
for (i <- 1 to 20) {
  println(l.head)
  l = l.tail 
} 

From a teaching angle Scala looks good too. No more semicolons to forget. Type inference to hide a lot of nastiness that comes with static typing. The interpreter to make println("Hello, World") work without the embarrassment of scaffolding needed in Java. The return of thin-end-first learning. But with a production ready language. Sweet.

So, Scala. Coming to a programming course near you soon. No bad thing.