What are spark and scala for?

Scala and Spark are being used at Facebook, Pinterest, NetFlix, Conviva, TripAdvisor for Big Data and Machine Learning applications. Saddle is the data library supported by Scala programming that provides a solid foundation for data manipulation through 2D data structures, robustness to missing values, array support and automatic data alignment. You will master the essential skills of the open source Apache Spark framework and the Scala programming language. The Scala programming language, developed by the founder of Typesafe, provides the confidence to design, develop, code and deploy things the right way, making the best use of the capabilities provided by Spark and other big data technologies.

The rule of thumb is that, using Scala or Python, developers can write the most concise code and, using Java or Scala, can achieve the best runtime performance. Many organisations favour the speed and simplicity of Spark, which supports many application programming interfaces (APIs) available from languages such as Java, R, Python and Scala. With support for multiple programming languages such as Java, Python, R and Scala in Spark - it often becomes difficult for developers to decide which language to choose when working on a Spark project. All these statistical reports show how Scala programming is becoming the choice for Apache Spark, to make data analysis faster.

The hands-on experience in working with Scala for Spark projects is an added advantage for developers who want to enjoy programming in Apache Spark seamlessly. The Scala programming language can be found in use at some of the top tech companies such as LinkedIn, Twitter and FourSquare. With the advent of various big data frameworks such as Apache Kafka and Apache Spark, the Scala programming language has gained prominence among big data developers. To conclude this introduction to Spark, an example of a scala wordcount application on tweets, which is developed on the scala API, is provided.

With support for immutable data structures, for-comprehensions, immutably named values - Scala provides remarkable support for functional programming. The biggest names in the digital economy are investing in Scala programming for big data processing - Kafka created by LinkedIn and Scalding created by Twitter.