Functional Programming in Scala

Program on a Higher Level

Write elegant functional code to analyze data that's big or small

About This Specialization

Discover how to write elegant code that works the first time it is run. This Specialization provides a hands-on introduction to functional programming using the widespread programming language, Scala. It begins from the basic building blocks of the functional paradigm, first showing how to use these blocks to solve small problems, before building up to combining these concepts to architect larger functional programs. You'll see how the functional paradigm facilitates parallel and distributed programming, and through a series of hands on examples and programming assignments, you'll learn how to analyze data sets small to large; from parallel programming on multicore architectures, to distributed programming on a cluster using Apache Spark. A final capstone project will allow you to apply the skills you learned by building a large data-intensive application using real-world data.

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5 courses

Follow the suggested order or choose your own.

Projects

Designed to help you practice and apply the skills you learn.

Certificates

Highlight your new skills on your resume or LinkedIn.

Courses

Intermediate Specialization.: Some related experience required.

COURSE 1
Functional Programming Principles in Scala
Upcoming session: Sep 25 — Nov 13.
Subtitles
English, Korean, Serbian, French
About the Course
Functional programming is becoming increasingly widespread in industry. This trend is driven by the adoption of Scala as the main programming language for many applications. Scala fuses functional and object-oriented programming in a practical package. It interoperates seamlessly with both Java and Javascript. Scala is the implementation language of many important frameworks, including Apache Spark, Kafka, and Akka. It provides the core infrastructure for sites such as Twitter, Tumblr and also Coursera. In this course you will discover the elements of the functional programming style and learn how to apply them usefully in your daily programming tasks. You will also develop a solid foundation for reasoning about functional programs, by touching upon proofs of invariants and the tracing of execution symbolically. The course is hands on; most units introduce short programs that serve as illustrations of important concepts and invite you to play with them, modifying and improving them. The course is complemented by a series programming projects as homework assignments. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - understand the principles of functional programming, - write purely functional programs, using recursion, pattern matching, and higher-order functions, - combine functional programming with objects and classes, - design immutable data structures, - reason about properties of functions, - understand generic types for functional programs Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line.
You can choose to take this course only. Learn more.
COURSE 2
Functional Program Design in Scala
Upcoming session: Sep 25 — Oct 30.
Subtitles
English
About the Course
In this course you will learn how to apply the functional programming style in the design of larger applications. You'll get to know important new functional programming concepts, from lazy evaluation to structuring your libraries using monads. We'll work on larger and more involved examples, from state space exploration to random testing to discrete circuit simulators. You’ll also learn some best practices on how to write good Scala code in the real world. Several parts of this course deal with the question how functional programming interacts with mutable state. We will explore the consequences of combining functions and state. We will also look at purely functional alternatives to mutable state, using infinite data structures or functional reactive programming. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - recognize and apply design principles of functional programs, - design functional libraries and their APIs, - competently combine functions and state in one program, - understand reasoning techniques for programs that combine functions and state, - write simple functional reactive applications. Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Functional Programming Principles in Scala: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1.
You can choose to take this course only. Learn more.
COURSE 3
Parallel programming
Upcoming session: Sep 25 — Oct 30.
Subtitles
English
About the Course
With every smartphone and computer now boasting multiple processors, the use of functional ideas to facilitate parallel programming is becoming increasingly widespread. In this course, you'll learn the fundamentals of parallel programming, from task parallelism to data parallelism. In particular, you'll see how many familiar ideas from functional programming map perfectly to to the data parallel paradigm. We'll start the nuts and bolts how to effectively parallelize familiar collections operations, and we'll build up to parallel collections, a production-ready data parallel collections library available in the Scala standard library. Throughout, we'll apply these concepts through several hands-on examples that analyze real-world data, such as popular algorithms like k-means clustering. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - reason about task and data parallel programs, - express common algorithms in a functional style and solve them in parallel, - competently microbenchmark parallel code, - write programs that effectively use parallel collections to achieve performance Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Functional Program Design in Scala: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun2.
You can choose to take this course only. Learn more.
COURSE 4
Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark
Upcoming session: Sep 25 — Oct 30.
Subtitles
English
About the Course
Manipulating big data distributed over a cluster using functional concepts is rampant in industry, and is arguably one of the first widespread industrial uses of functional ideas. This is evidenced by the popularity of MapReduce and Hadoop, and most recently Apache Spark, a fast, in-memory distributed collections framework written in Scala. In this course, we'll see how the data parallel paradigm can be extended to the distributed case, using Spark throughout. We'll cover Spark's programming model in detail, being careful to understand how and when it differs from familiar programming models, like shared-memory parallel collections or sequential Scala collections. Through hands-on examples in Spark and Scala, we'll learn when important issues related to distribution like latency and network communication should be considered and how they can be addressed effectively for improved performance. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - read data from persistent storage and load it into Apache Spark, - manipulate data with Spark and Scala, - express algorithms for data analysis in a functional style, - recognize how to avoid shuffles and recomputation in Spark, Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Parallel Programming: https://www.coursera.org/learn/parprog1.
You can choose to take this course only. Learn more.
COURSE 5
Functional Programming in Scala Capstone
Current session: Sep 18 — Nov 6.
Commitment
6 weeks, 4-5 hours/week
Subtitles
English
About the Course
In the final capstone project you will apply the skills you learned by building a large data-intensive application using real-world data. You will implement a complete application processing several gigabytes of data. This application will show interactive visualizations of the evolution of temperatures over time all over the world. The development of such an application will involve: — transforming data provided by weather stations into meaningful information like, for instance, the average temperature of each point of the globe over the last ten years ; — then, making images from this information by using spatial and linear interpolation techniques ; — finally, implementing how the user interface will react to users’ actions.
You can choose to take this course only. Learn more.

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EPFL is Europe’s most cosmopolitan technical university with students, professors and staff from over 120 nations. A dynamic environment, open to Switzerland and the world, EPFL is centered on its three missions: teaching, research and technology transfer.