10 Reasons to Learn Scala Programming Language in 2024 [UPDATED]

One of the questions my reader often ask me is, should Java developers learn Scala? Does Scala has a better future than Java, or why Java developer should learn Scala, and so on. Well, there can be many reasons for learning Scala, like you are forced to learn because it has been used in the new company you joined or your solution architect decided to use it, but that's a different story. Here, we'll talk about the reasons which encourage Java developers to learn Scala.  Scala has emerged as one of the most powerful Java alternatives in recent times. It's been the JVM language of choice, leaving Groovy and Clojure way behind, and preferred as the language people want to write most code in.

Scala has several strong points, the strongest being the multi-paradigm language. With the superiority of functional programming idioms to take advantage of multi-core CPU architecture, Scala has the right mix of the popular object-oriented paradigm and powerful functional programming language.

It not only solves many Java issues, like less to no boilerplate but also provides several best practices and patterns, right from the language. Despite providing fluency and flexibility of dynamic language like Python, it's still a strongly statically typed language to prevent you from doing bad things, which just happen at runtime in the case of a dynamic language.

I am sure Scala developers will add many more reasons to this list, but being from a Java background and an ardent supporter of Java, I think Scala definitely got something to offer, and the following reasons make a lot of cases for Java developers to learn Scala.

 If you are already convinced and looking for resources to learn Scala then I suggest you check out the Scala and Functional Programming for Beginners | Rock the JVM course on Udemy to start with. It's a nice course for beginners who are both new to Scala and Functional programming.

10 Reasons to learn Scala Programming Language in 2024

Here are some of the reasons I think Java programmers or per se any programmer should learn Scala:

1. Multi-Paradigm language

Scala is a bit different than Java, as it supports two programming paradigms: object-oriented programming (OOP) and functional programming (FP). For advancing in programming skills, it's good to learn at least one language from different paradigms, like imperative, logical, functional, and OOP, and Scala gives you a chance to explore both functional and oop together.

The Pragmatic Programmer book also advised you to learn a new programming language every year. Scala allows you to define types associated with both data attributes (with classes behaving like C++/Java classes) and behavior attributes (with traits corresponding to Java interfaces).

Just like in other functional programming languages, Scala functions are first-class (which means you can pass them around as values), and Scala also supports anonymous functions and currying (partial application of multi-argument functions).

This combination of features makes it possible to write Scala programs that are quite concise and elegant. Being multi-paradigm is one of the strongest selling points of Scala, which Java 8 has also attempted by introducing lambda expressions (see Java SE 8 New Features), but it is still a couple of steps behind. I think Scala will always be more functional than Java, but that's the topic of another debate.

2. Interoperability with Java

In my opinion, Scala's choice of being interoperable with Java is the best thing to happen to Scala. Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and can interoperate nicely with Java code. This means Scala developers can use Java libraries directly from Scala code.

Given, many Java developers are turning into Scala, this is the perfect way of leveraging their years of experience in real-world programming. It is also possible to call Scala code from Java, and you can easily write part of your program in Scala and the rest in Java.

In short, Interoperability with Java gives Scala a huge potential to become a mainstream, enterprise programming language, as so much of the world's code is written in Java, and so many developers are working in Java around the world.

3. Best Practices and Patterns built-in language

One thing you might not know about Scala is that it was originally developed at the Swiss university EPFL in an attempt to apply recent innovations in programming languages research to a language that can gain mainstream traction, much like Java.

Several best practices and patterns are built into the language itself, e.g. val declares top-level immutability, which is much better than the overloaded final in Java, or const/read-only in C# with the weird rules associated with it.

Scala also offers closures, a feature that dynamic languages like Python and Ruby have adopted from the functional programming paradigm.

4. Expressiveness of language

When you compare Scala with Java as I did in my previous post about the difference between Scala and Java, Scala certainly scores big over Java. Scala is inherently very expressive. There are also tons and tons of really beautiful and useful code written in Scala. This is attracting more and more Java developers to learn Scala, who like such beautiful code.

To give you an idea, here is the word count program written in both Java and Scala, you can see the difference in the expressiveness of language by yourself. Scala has achieved in just one line what Java has taken more than 10 lines to achieve.

Btw, things can be improved on the Java side by using Java 8 features, which is not used in this example, but still, Scala scores big over Java when it comes to concise and clean code.

5. Marketable

Which programmer doesn't want to be marketable? One reason for learning a new technology or framework is always a better job and career growth. Learning Scala will certainly make you more marketable.  Many companies are using or migrating to Scala these days, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Quora.

Given Scala's marketing as a Scalable language, days are not far when the big Investment banks and Financial organizations will start looking at Scala for their low latency solutions. Similar to the advice given in Effective Java, Twitter has already shared best practices to develop programs in Scala as Effective Scala.

The founders of Quora spent a couple of months building a Scala web framework in order to use Scala. Martin Odersky, the man behind Scala, is now behind the start-up Typeface for supporting commercial Scala development. All things are going in the right direction for Scala to grow as the first alternative to Java.

6. Statically typed language

In general, statically typed language like Java prevents programmers from doing bad things, while with a dynamic language like Python, you only know about a bad thing when you run the program.

Scala is the best of both worlds. It feels dynamic, but it's strongly statically typed languages, e.g. Haskell or Java. Scala compiler is really smart and uses type-inference up to the full extent.

Scala provides type inference for variables and functions, much better than limited type inference in Java and C#. See Beginning Scala Programming learn more about Scala language features.

7. Growing Framework, like Akka, Play, and Spark

One thing which you might know is that Scala is growing and it's growing very well. Lots of good libraries, frameworks are coming around. Companies that have started using Scala are also contributing to the recent growth of Scala as a mainstream language.

There are some nice Scala web frameworks out there, including Lift and Play. Akka, another Scala-based concurrent framework, has already established itself as a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant event-driven applications on the JVM.

Scala is also being used in Big data space along with Apache Spark, which has further fueled its adoption by many Java developers interested in Big Data Space.

8. Growing Community

Along with language, the Scala community is also growing and growing very fast. Lots of programmers, including Java developers, are joining the Scala bandwagon. More and more frameworks, libraries are getting built on Scala.

More and more IDEs are started to support Scala syntax, much better support in Eclipse and IntelliJIDEA. Great build tool support in SBT, Maven, and Ant. Well, Part of this is because of Scala's capability as being a language, which can be as terse as many dynamic languages like python, at the same time can offer features like static typing, type-inference, a mix of functional programming and object-oriented programming.

In Recent surveys, Scala is also touted as the number one alternative to Java. In my opinion, to grow Scala has the real alternative of Java, given Java 8 also has functional programming support, it has to attract more and more Java developers. Getting a big organization like Twitter to adopt Scala, certainly helps the community, as they have more resources and influence.

9. Concise Syntax

Java has long been criticized for its verbose and boilerplate syntax. Though it makes Java more readable, much like English, Scala has set a new benchmark in being concise and readable at the same time. 

Scala compiler, known as a scalar (remember javac), does more than you expect; it can generate toString(), equals(), hashcode(), and other things for you. Consider two code snippets of the same class written in Java and Scala and make your choice :

public class Book {
    private final String name;
    private final double price;
    public Star(String name, double price) {
        this.name = name;
        this.price = price;
    }
    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int hash = 7;
        hash = 23 * hash + Objects.hashCode(this.name);
        return hash;
    }
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (obj == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
        final Test other = (Test) obj;
        if (!Objects.equals(this.name, other.name)) {
            return false;
        }
        if (Double.doubleToLongBits(this.price) != Double.doubleToLongBits(other.price)) {
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Test{" + "name=" + name + ", price=" + price + '}';
    }

}

You can write the same thing, using Scala's case class as below :

case class Book(name: String, price: double)

Btw, you can also use the Lombok library, one of the essential libraries for Java developers, to remove the boilerplate code related to getter, setter, equals, hashCode, and toString. It can automatically generate those for you.

10. Relative Easy to learn

For a Java developer learning a classical functional programming language like Haskell or OCaml is rather difficult than Scala; in other words, Scala is relatively easy to learn because of its oop functionality.

While taking their time to learn Functional Programming, Java developers can still be productive in Scala by leveraging their existing knowledge of OOP. Like Java, Scala has clean syntax, nice libraries, good online documentation, and lots of people in the industry using it.

With a growing community of Scala forums, StackOverflow, it's not difficult to find an answer to any Scala questions, which adds to your learning experience.


That's all about Why Java programmers should learn Scala or some practical Reasons for learning Scala programming language. I am sure you will find many more reasons, once you start exploring it. Once you start learning Scala, I am sure you will LOVE IT.

It not only got the cleaner OO code but also Functional capabilities; it feels dynamic (Like Python) but also has a static type system that can prevent you from doing bad things. If you decided to learn Scala in 2024, here are some of the useful resources for further learning

Further Learning
Scala and Functional Programming for Beginners
Apache Spark with Scala 
Spark and Hadoop Developer Certification - Scala


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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like Scala and find my reasons helpful, then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any more reasons to add to this list, feel free to drop a note. 

P. S. - If you are serious about learning Scala, Functional Programming, and frameworks like Akka and looking for the best Scala courses to start with then you can also check out Scala and Functional Programming for Beginners | Rock the JVM  course by Daniel on Udemy. This 15 hour 30 minutes online course is the best course to learn Scala online.