Scala Koans - A new and fun way to learn a Scala programming language (Bring a Laptop)

Workshop Requirements

This session is a workshop. Please come prepared.

Namaste,

For those planning to attend the Scala Koans…

Welcome to Scala Koans!

Scala Koans is an interactive session that puts the programming and learning in your hands. Therefore, a laptop is required by all participants. If you do not have a laptop, then perhaps you have a friend with a laptop, is so, well, that would work too. In order to participate in the Scala Koan endeavor, a few things are required:

• A laptop
• A modern JDK installation. JDK 1.6+ will suffice. Remember that it should be a JDK and not a JRE!
• Your JDK should be mapped properly to JAVA_HOME and your PATH variables.
• An installation of your favorite IDE or editor.
• An inquisitive mind.

The process of actually running the koans will be covered during the session. Unfortunately, Internet connectivity is sometimes a dicey affair and at times it can rain on our parade. To avoid having to wait for the install at the conference you can prepare for the koans before the conference! If you don't have the opportunity to do this, we will have either memory sticks or private networks at the conference.

If you want to get started with the set up:

1. Download the koans by visiting https://bitbucket.org/dmarsh/scalakoansexercises and click on the download link on the right hand side of the page. (or you can clone the bitbucket project)
2. Unzip the koans: dmarsh-scalakoansexercises-#####.zip
3. cd into the dmarsh-scalakoansexercises-#### folder
4. If you are in Linux or MacOSX run: ./koans, on Windows ./koans.bat
5. After some initialization, you are now in the koans/sbt shell (you should see a > prompt)
6. In the shell run the following commands:
   a. test:compile
   b. eclipse (if you are planning to use Eclipse)
   c. gen-idea (if you are planning to IntelliJ Idea)
7. Exit the shell by typing exit

Before attending the koans session, you may want to take the opportunity to load some Scala Plugins onto your favorite IDE and Editor. Below is a list of resources that you can use to enhance your environment so that you can enjoy Scala syntax highlighting and other helpful tools like refactoring, debugging and analysis.

Eclipse - The Eclipse has an IDE plugin for Scala called aptly scala-ide. All the information about the plugin can be found at http://scala-ide.org including an easy to follow along video located at http://scala-ide.org/docs/current-user-doc/gettingstarted/index.html

IntelliJ - IntelliJ has a Scala plugin that can be found by going to Settings -> Plugins, clicking on 'Browse Repositories' button and searching for the 'Scala' plugin on the left. Right click on the 'Scala' and choose 'Install'. IntelliJ will prompt you to restart the IDE, do so, and enjoy.

NetBeans - Currently, Github user 'dcaoyuan' hosts a NetBeans Scala plugin at the address: https://github.com/dcaoyuan/nbscala. I have not tried this out since the number of NetBeans users has shrunk in recent years. If you are an avid NetBeans user, and wish to try it, you can let me know the results during the session. There is additional information at: http://wiki.netbeans.org/Scala

Emacs - Github user 'aemoncannon' has created 'ENSIME' (ENhanced Scala Interaction Mode for Emacs) at the address and has a great following. https://github.com/aemoncannon/ensime with some documentation at http://aemoncannon.github.io/ensime.

VIM - For VIM users you can use https://github.com/derekwyatt/vim-scala as a VIM plugin that offers Scala color highlighting

That is it. Hope to see you soon.