Applications of Computing in Industry : Lecture

Fuelled by its adoption by the likes of Foursquare and Twitter, Scala has received a lot of publicity over the last few years as an alternative JVM language which attempts to bridge the worlds of object-oriented and functional programming. It is often derided as being academic, complex and fraught with issues of binary compatibility. Despite this, there has been an explosion of interest in the language in the financial sector, spanning large and small institutions alike. In this talk, we will cover some of the language features that make scala such a compelling choice; taking in some practical examples along the way to clearer, more functional and bugfree code

Chris, appearing as @oxbow_lakes on StackOverflow.com is one of six scala gold-badge holders and has been programming in the language at GSA for over 3 years, following a fraught ten year relationship with Java. A mathematician by training, he's spent 14 years in financial IT, the last five and a half of which have been at GSA where he works in the CORE technology team. Chris has given several talks on scala and the scalaz functional-programming library as part of both the London Scala eXchange and the Scala Lift-off. He can often be found jabbering on the subject of applicative functors to anyone who is foolish enough to listen.