Learning Functional Programming with Scala

It seems to me that it's time that I looked into functional programming, and Scala seems to be a really good entry point. Why?

1. It's open source, so there's little financial cost of entry.
2. It's built on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), so whatever I write will be runtime compatible with anything I do or have done in Java.
3. There's an Eclipse Plugin for that, so I get to use my favorite development environment.
4. It seems to be maturing. Scala is actively maintained, has a good user community, and people are writing helpful things about it. (I hope eventually to be one of the latter.)

So here's what I'm going to do...

• I'm going to get a Scala environment installed on my machine.
• I'm going to start fooling around with tutorials and such.
• I'm going to write something that I can share with the world. It'll run wherever Java runs (that I am able to test), meaning that at minimum I want it to be able to run on my desktop, on the web (including as a Facebook app) and on my Android.

If you've ever thought about following this blog, or following me on Facebook or Twitter, now would be a good time.

Busy family person disclaimer: I don't know how consistently I'll be able to pursue this. This is strictly a time-available kind of thing. Why? Little people are competing for my time, and they win. But they sleep more than I do, so I think I have a fighting chance to get a post or two out once in a while.