This week in #Scala (11/01/2013)

Welcome to another edition of #ThisWeekInScala.

I’d like to begin with an introduction to the Scala Improvement Process or SIP for short.  Martin Odersky encouraged participation during his keynote at the Scala eXchange towards the end of last year. There’s a useful page showing completed and pending requests known as SIPs and it’s open to all.  If you’ve been using Scala for some time and think there’s a missing language feature, or something that needs tweaking, make it known!

Onto this week’s roundup…

New Stuff

• Play 2.1-RC2 is out and will most likely be the final candidate release. Take it for a ride!
  • On that note, Play sample apps for the upcoming Manning book ‘Play for Scala’ are now available on Github, with branches for versions 2.1-RC1 and 2.0
• Lift 2.5 snapshot for #Scala 2.10 is out
• A bijection library for Scala is available, from the folks at Twitter
• The Akka and Spray teams are collaborating on a new akka-io layer
• Play 2 framework has a good slice of the pie on CloudBees deployments
• Vacancies for Scala developers are skyrocketing, according to the latest indeed trends
  • However, Barb Darrow provides some wider context

Old Stuff

This week I offer you an academic paper by Martin Odersky and Ingo Maier about functional reactive programming, where the widely used Observer Pattern is challenged:

• Deprecating the Observer Pattern with Scala.React (2012)
  • Preceded by: Deprecating the Observer Pattern (2010)

Blogs & Tutorials

• Adriaan Moors of Typesafe shared his thoughts on how Scala 2.10 facilitates a simpler way to tackle complex problems
• The Akka team wrote about Makkros as first step towards typed channels
• Kelsey Innis shared her favourite resourcesfor getting started with Scala and functional programming
  • BTW, the video and slides from her talk “Learning Functional Programming without Growing a Neckbeard” at SF Scala are also available
• Erik Rozendaal completed part 6 of his series “Simple event sourcing”: users, authentication, authorization
• Alex Staveley blogged about Scala Function Literals
• Johan Oskarsson described the Twitter stack which comprises multiple Scala-based services
• LearnScala.de posted an interview with Martin Konicek about his real-world experiences with Scala
• Cameron McKenzie questioned Josh Suereth about whether the Scala type system is too complex for Java developers for TheServerSide.com

And yes, Cake is still looking for Scala developers for a growing number of exciting projects.  Come to the UK and work with us!

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That’s all folks.  Have a great week. Remember you can get in touch with me directly via email or message me on twitter (@ChrisCundill) with any Scala news, events or content.