I mentioned earlier this week that SRT will be hosting “Six Weeks of Scala”, starting on Monday, October 11, from 5-7 pm.  This will be a loosely structured event, designed so that people who want to write some code in Scala have a supportive, collaborative environment.  Come once or come weekly: we’ll be here, and you are welcome.  This event is free and open to the public.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what to install prior to the first session.  My comments about coming with an IDE were targeted toward those who want to write Scala in a test-driven way.  But one of the great things about Scala is that you can learn a lot in a low-friction way, by working in the interactive shell.  So, particularly if you are new to Scala, this is a great way to start.  Simply install Scala 2.8 (sometime BEFORE Monday at SRT so that you don’t take down our internet) and get started.

If you want to use an IDE, you have several choices: NetBeans, IntelliJ’s IDEA, and Eclipse.  Each of these have Scala plugins.  I’ve been using NetBeans lately, but a lot of people who came to the Scala Code Retreat a few weeks ago were happily using Eclipse.  One guy had IDEA.  Choose your favorite, or wait to see what others are using and why they like them.

We haven’t identified a single goal of what we want to build.  Certainly, groups may form who would like to do that.  Others may just want to experiment.  Please don’t feel that you have to commit to the entire 6 weeks in order to participate.  This is not a structured class that makes that necessary.