Introduction
This article is part of the Scala knowledge bits Series.
Periodically, I will publish new exercises so you can slowly build up knowledge about Scala.
It is designed to be done in a very short amount of time and learn a little bit each day, just to create a routine.
This episode will teach you about Scala Typeclass.
Hope you are going to enjoy it! It is designed for anyone to learn Scala from scratch and slowly learn, one Bit at a time.
After this Bit, I would love to hear your feedback in the comments down below.
Feel free to join the Discord server as well if you would like some help and support from the rest of our community.
What are we learning today?
Today we are going to learn about Scala Typeclass !
Typeclasses woooohh , sorry it is a bit late for scary Halloween words but here we are !
More seriously, we already saw all the components of what a Typeclass is but we haven’t formalized the word.
Time to try on the exercise on your own and scroll down for more information when you are done or if you are stuck.
Exercise
Here is an exercise to complete today.
If I did my job well, you should be able to guess by yourself the solution based on what you previously learned and based on the clues.
But if you get stuck, scroll down to get more information.
The goal of the exercise is to replace the ??? by a piece of code so that the exercise compiles and that’s how you win! Good luck!
You can fill the exercise right in here:
Or, if it does not load, go on to Scastie (UtjWBavyRMWd7mpfLiXlfQ).
More information about Scala Typeclass
In this exercise you will learn (or have learned, if you have already solved the puzzle) about Scala Typeclass.
We saw generic type before
And we learned about implicit val as well and how to use them.
I am just introducing implicit object while we are at it. But it works the exact same way.
So what are Typeclasses ? It is just a construct that involve a trait, implicit implementations and a function that leverage those implicit implementations
That’s it !
As always, we talked about it in the past, using implicit can be dangerous and hard to maintain. It is easy to forget where the implementation is and it can be hard to find it back depending on the IDE you are using. Also debugging can be tricky. Use it when it seems right !
Feel free to go back to the exercise, modify the code to try out new things and get a better intuition for Scala Typeclass.
Conclusion
I hope you have learned something new or had fun during this Scala Knowledge Bit.
Please ask questions or post feedback in the comments below.
Feel free to try on the next Scala Knowledege Bit.
If you are curious about the previous Scala knowledge Bits, go check it out! 🙂