Come join us for another gathering of PDXScala, the Portland Scala users group. This is a casual group focused around the Scala programming language. We welcome both newcomers and experts alike.

Thomas Lockney will be presenting SBT (Simple Build Tool) as a convenient tool for exploring Java libraries with Scala. One of the primary benefits of Scala being available on the JVM is easy integration with existing Java code, but as any Java developer can tell you, it can take a lot of boilerplate to get started exploring a new library. Scala (and SBT) make it possible to shortcut through a lot of this excess code and get right to the heart of the matter.

Brian Panulla has generously agreed to be our first subject for a group code review. He'll be showing his program which converts an XML file to RDF/OWL and we'll have the opportunity, as a group, to look for ways to improve it.

We look forward to seeing you!

We're going to just have a casual meeting this month, so we can hang out, talk about whatever project or bit of code has captured your attention of late, and drink beer. We'll be meeting concurrently with the fine folks at the PDX Weekly Hackathon, so there should be plenty of discussion of quite a varied nature. Feel free to come out and hack on things, of course!

Come join other Scala enthusiasts at our new location graciously hosted by Jive Software. Anything Scala related is open for discussion. We'll have Jesse Hallett discussing how he put together a lambda calculus to learn about Scala's parsing libraries. Leif Warner will also be showing an application he's been developing which uses the Step web framework (a workalike of the the Sinatra framework in Ruby). This app uses Simple Build Tool, Scardf, Jena, TDB, RDF/OWL, graphs and federated queries and is intended to provide an "open source community family tree" of the local Portland-area music scene.

If you have a project or some code you'd like to share (for review or just to look at how you solved an interesting problem) please bring it along. Pizza will be provided by Jive.

http://pdxscala.org/next-pdxscala-meeting-thusday-415-7pm-at-jive

It's that time again! It seems to sneak up on me and if I'm not careful, I'll forget to send these notices out entirely. But fate intervened and I was reminded about it just now, so... without further ado... I'm happy to say we have what looks to be a very interesting talk this month being given by Stephen Judkins. Here's the description in his own words:

GOTO Considered Awesome: Delimited Continuations in Scala

Scala 2.8 adds support for delimited continuations, a powerful control-flow abstraction. First, I'll show how the the impressive power offered by continuations can be used for good or evil. I will demonstrate how they can be used to implement GOTO in Scala, then I'll show how a simple, synchronous Scala program can be transformed into a distributed, asynchronous web application that could support millions of concurrent users.

I'll explain what a continuation actually is, and how Scala's are "delimited". I'll step though the code transformations the Scala compiler performs in order to support continuations. I'll show the limitations of Scala's continuation support and how it could be improved. Finally, I'll explain how continuations are a fundamental abstraction upon which many other things can be built.

If you have other topics you'd like to discuss or just want to come hear how others are using Scala, please come join us. There is always plenty of opportunity for open discussions and mini-presentations.

Come join us for another gathering of PDXScala, graciously hosted by Jive Software. We'll be meeting at 7PM, June 17th, and Steven Osborn will be talking about his experiences developing for Android using Scala.

Interested in Android Mobile OS development, but want to be able to program in Scala? Well you can have your cake and eat it too. Steven will give a high level overview of the Android development platform along with his experiences using SBT along the SBT Android plugin to rapidly develop Android applications. We'll cover everything from setting up your project, running your hello world application, and testing.

Steven is the CTO of Urban Airship, a local mobile messaging and content deliver company providing easy to use, cross-platform web services for iPhone, Blackberry and Android. With nearly a decade of experience in the industry he has participated in all stages of a software company from startup to acquisition. Steven enjoys participating in open source development and has contributed significant amounts of code to projects, including Android OpenIntents and IDiB (Identity In The Browser). Steven is also an accomplished Guitar Hero rockstar and believes strongly that ideas are worthless and execution is everything.

If you have other topics you'd like to discuss or just want to come hear how others are using Scala, please come join us. There is always plenty of opportunity for open discussions and mini-presentations.

Come join fellow Scala hackers and enthusiasts. The guest speaker for this meeting will be Cooper Francis. He's going to cover some of the tricky changes that came in Scala 2.8 (particularly looking at arrays, manifests and implicits) and then do a bit of an exposition of implicits in general and how they can be used to create type classes. This should be a fun talk and I don't doubt we'll all learn something. If any of you have already delved into these changes, please come share your experiences and if you haven't, well... no better time than Thursday night to learn about them!

Once again, our meeting will be at Jive Software (courtesy of Jesse Hallett) and will be starting at 7PM.

We're just going to take it easy this month and have a casual gathering at the Lucky Lab. If weather permits, expect to find us on the back patio.

It's time, once again, for another chance to meet up with fellow Scala developers and enthusiasts (or even the Scala-curious -- you're welcome, too). We'll be meeting this month at the BankSimple offices, located at 334 NW 11th at 7PM this Thursday, March 17th.

I'll give a brief talk about our experiences building Scala code on top of a Clojure framework and some of the trials and tribulations involved in doing so, and Bryan Armstrong will be talk about "Getting back to deterministic resource release by reimplementing 'disposable' semantics and conditionally verifying client code compliance via phantom reference tracking."

Of course, there will also be time for open discussion and questions, possibly even a brief ad-hoc presentation if someone has something they really want to show off.

Come join other Scala enthusiasts to talk about all-things Scala related. Whether you're a newcomer or are writing books on the subject, we welcome you. If you're interested in giving a talk or have a talk you'd like someone to give (we'll do our best to find someone qualified), let us know.

Come join other Scala fans, whether you're a seasoned oldtimer or complete beginner. We'll have open discussions and a variety of presentations and examples. If you have topics you're interested in hearing more about or something you'd like to give a presentation on, please let us know! Also, feel free to bring code you'd like to show off or get input on from the rest of the group!

This month we will be starting a new format with the first hour of the meeting (now starting at 6PM) devoted to newcomers to Scala. If you have questions about getting started with Scala, how to set up a project, or advice on libraries, idioms or whatever, come by and join in. In addition, we have three very interesting talks lined up for those of you who want to dive a bit deeper:

• Anthony Dupre will be talking about more Play Framework goodness including Iteratees and Numeratees.
• Rob Norris will be talking about using the free monad to build pure APIs that manipulate mutable objects.
• Leif Warner will be giving a talk on the Scalaz Stream library (https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz-stream), a Scala derivative of Edward Kmett's Haskell-based "Machines" library (http://hackage.haskell.org/package/machines).

We'll have pizza available at 6, so if you're planning to join us, come early if you're hungry!