So, what have I been doing with programming recently?

Scala is an amazing multiparadigm programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine and interoperates with Java. I learned about it last time reading random articles on Twitter.

When I say “amazing” I mean “This is a language in which my code gives me nerdgasms every time I read it.” Wheeee.

Okay, it’s not perfect. People say it’s too academic. It has a notoriously complicated type system (which is Turing-Complete at compile time). Its documentation is a bit patchy too. For a serious introduction, the Scala website has plenty of links under documentation, and a tour of features. Somebody wrote another tour that explains things a bit more. So here, instead of introducing it seriously, I’m just going to screw with its features.

Example of freedom. Scala lets names consist of symbols, and treats one-parameter methods and infix operators exactly the same. The full tokenization rules are a bit detailed and I put them at the bottom of this post for the interested. This lets you create classes with arithmetic and domain-specific languages easily, but it also creates some silly opportunities:

scala> val * = 12
*: Int = 12

scala> * * * * *
res0: Int = 1728