Programming in Scala for Big Data Systems

Scala is a strongly typed, versatile programming language that has emerged as a de facto language for big data systems. Scala supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented programming (OOP) and functional programming (FP) techniques. This hands-on course covers types and data structures, build and testing tools, functional programming concepts with higher-order functions, pattern matching, concurrency, and parallel processing. Popular libraries in the Scala ecosystem are introduced. Students reinforce techniques taught in lectures by completing weekly programming assignments. Throughout the course, students leverage modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools and techniques to enhance software development and data engineering workflows. Students examine how AI can accelerate development while maintaining strong engineering rigor, reproducibility, and code quality. Students apply their knowledge to develop batch and stream processing applications in Apache Spark, Apache Beam, and Kafka Streams through group and capstone projects.