SkillsCast

Why Scala is Taking Over the Big Data World

scala big-data functional-programming jvm

8th December 2014 in London

There are 49 other SkillsCasts available from Scala eXchange 2014

Please log in to watch this conference skillscast.

Want to find out why those dealing with Big Data are increasingly being won over by the power of Scala? Dean Wampler, recognised Scala author and expert, will give the keynote to open the second day of Scala X.

Users of Big (and not so Big) Data roughly divide into three groups, developers like us, traditional data analysts, and a hybrid called data scientists. The analysts prefer SQL, SAS, and similar, traditional tools. The scientists (mostly statisticians, really) prefer Python and R, with Julia emerging. The Developers started with Java, but they are being seduced by Scala, because it offers ideal tools for data-centric applications.

This talk explains why data-centric applications are driving Scala adoption. Scala already provides these essential features:

Expressive DSLs.
The JVM.
Actors for distributed scaling.
Optimizations for primitives, but uniform source abstractions.
Functional combinators.

These features combine to yield powerful, scalable tools with concise APIs:

Scalding and Summingbird - for Hadoop and Storm
Spark and H2O - the Next Generation...
Spire and Algebird - Mathematics

Finally, we'll discuss what's missing and what's ahead.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

Thanks to our sponsors

About the Speaker