Scala vs.​ Java

Both Java and Scala are statically typed​ programming languages. Sun Microsystems developed Java, and Martin Odersky developed Scala.

Let’s go over the main differences between the two languages.

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Scala

  • Incorporates functional and object-oriented programming.

  • Not compatible with its previous versions.

  • Code written in Scala is generally more compact than the same code written in Java.

  • Supports delaying the evaluation of an expression until its value is needed, i.e., lazy evaluation.

  • Supports operator overloading.

  • Takes more time to compile code than Java.

  • Treats a function like a variable.

Java

  • Incorporates object-oriented programming, and has started to support very limited functional programming in recent versions.

  • Compatible with its previous versions.

  • Code written in Java is generally less compact.

  • Does not support lazy evaluation.

  • Does not support operator overloading.

  • Code compilation takes less time that it does in Scala.

  • Treats a function like an object.

Code

The following code snippets highlight the syntactic differences between Scala and Java:

class Greeting {
def Greet() {
println("Hello from Educative!");
}
}
object Main extends App {
var obj = new Greeting();
obj.Greet();
}
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