Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Scala and Lift - Functional Recipes for the Web

As part of his IEEE Internet Computing columns, Steve Vinoski will be evangelizing The Functional Web, covering the application of functional programming languages and techniques to the world of web development. He had set up the background nicely in the March/April issue of the column.

The first topical column on the same subject is out with the May/June issue. I am deeply honored to coauthor with Steve in exploring Scala, the statically typed OO-functional language and Lift, the Web development framework based on the functional features of Scala.

The column highlights the functional programming features that Scala implements viz. immutable data structures, higher order functions and closures, pattern matching over abstract data types, alongside an advanced static typing model. Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine and offers a synergistic interoperability with the rich ecosystem of frameworks and libraries that the Java world embodies. Lift is the Web MVC framework built on top of the richness of the Scala functional model.

In the coming issues of Internet Computing column, Steve has an exciting set of recipes for all the FP enthusiasts planning to implement their next Web application on the goodness of functional programming .. keep an eye on his blog for more details ..

Meanwhile here is the pointer to the pdf version of the current column on Scala and Lift .. enjoy!

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