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The official Jupyter Conference
August 22-23, 2017: Training
August 23-25, 2017: Tutorials & Conference
New York, NY

Scala: Why hasn't an official Scala kernel for Jupyter emerged yet?

Alexandre Archambault (Teads.tv)
11:55am–12:35pm Friday, August 25, 2017
Kernels
 Location: Nassau Level: Intermediate
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Who is this presentation for?

  • Software and data engineers with an interest in Scala

Prerequisite knowledge

  • Basic knowledge of JVM concepts (JARs, classpath, classes on the JVM, etc.)
  • Familiarity with Scala and related big data frameworks (Spark, Scio, Scalding, etc.)

What you'll learn

  • Explore the Ammonite project

Description

Alexandre Archambault explores why an official Scala kernel for Jupyter has yet to emerge. Part of the answer lies in the fact that there is no user-friendly, easy-to-use Scala shell in the console (i.e., no IPython for Scala). But there’s a new contender, Ammonite—although it still has to overcome a few challenges, not least being supporting by big data frameworks like Spark, Scio, and Scalding.

Alexandre reviews the challenges it has to overcome to become a full-fledged Scala shell and offers a tour of some very Scala- or JVM-specific features, such as the convenient way dependencies are managed (no virtualenv on the JVM!) and how it allows sending objects over the wire for distributed calculations (compiler-generated objects in particular, which Spark heavily relies on). Alexandre illustrates these points with jupyter-scala, a Scala kernel for Jupyter (which rests on a fork of Ammonite) that tries to address these challenges.

Photo of Alexandre Archambault

Alexandre Archambault

Teads.tv

Alexandre Archambault is a software and data engineer, and a contributor to or author of various Scala projects, including coursier and shapeless.