Scala from Scratch: Exploration is the first in a series of two books that teach you the Scala programming language. Readers that have some experience with an object-oriented or imperative language, like Java, Ruby, or Python, will get a comprehensive overview of what Scala brings to the table. The goal is to get you excited about Scala and give you a strong foundation for writing your first applications and continuing your journey. By the end of the book, you will have a good idea of what it's like to work with Scala, and you will have written a small, but complete command-line application based on a Functional Core, Imperative Shell architecture.

In this book you will learn about functional and object-oriented aspects of Scala. You will learn how to write expressive, intent-revealing code using pattern matching, functional sequence processing and for comprehensions, and how to design data types that enforce their business invariants in a functional way, without throwing exceptions. You will get a first glimpse at Scala's powerful type system and how to abstract over concrete types, and you will learn all there is to know about working with Option, Scala's approach at avoiding the million dollar mistake of null references.