A Recap of Scala Matters Meet-ups in 2024

Celebrating the Scala Community: A Recap of 2024’s Scala Matters Meetup

In October 2024, Scala Matters, powered by UMATR, partnered with Adevinta and Marktplaats to host an engaging Scala meetup in Amsterdam and collaborated with SiriusXM for another meet-up in New York. The Amsterdam event attracted over 120 participants, while approximately 70 attendees gathered in New York. Both events featured an evening filled with insightful discussions, knowledge sharing, and networking. The excitement was palpable as participants engaged in meaningful conversations about Scala programming!

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Reflecting on the Events: Feedback from Scala Experts

Martin Sturm, Software Engineer at Adevinta, fondly recalled the early days of Scala meet-ups: "It was amazing to see so many participants. I remember our first Scala-related meet-up back in 2010 when we were thrilled to host 20 people. This was an entirely different experience."

The Scala community’s growth is undeniable, and events like these play a vital role in fostering connections, sparking new ideas, and advancing innovation.

Adevinta, the event host, also expressed their pride: "We're proud to have hosted such a successful Scala Matters Meetup!"

SiriusXM added, “What a fantastic Scala meetup in New York last night! Strong showing from speakers, the Scala community, and SiriusXM engineers!”

Scala Matters was founded to bring professionals who are passionate about Scala, and it’s exactly the platform we wanted for it to become! With UMATR’s great network, we knew we would always bring the best people to the room.

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Scala’s Enduring Importance in Data Engineering

Dario Amorosi’s presentation was one of the standout moments at the Amsterdam meetup, reinforcing Scala’s continued dominance in data engineering, even as other programming languages gain traction. He shared an insightful case study on how his team tackled the rising costs of their data pipeline. Dario explained how they transitioned from using Dataflow to a custom-built solution powered by Scala and ZIO. The new system stages data in Cloud Storage before loading it into BigQuery, processing over 2 billion daily events while significantly reducing operational costs.

Elaborating on the significance of events like these, Dario noted: "Events like this are vital for developers to stay updated on the latest technological advancements and exchange ideas with peers. It’s a space to explore new approaches and learn how others are solving similar challenges."

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Breaking the Spaghetti Monster: Event Sourcing and Akka in Action

The talk was followed by Stephanie Cattoir and Leon Weemen, Senior Software Engineers at Bynder, who gave an engaging case study on tackling complexity within a legacy monolith. Their talk, "Breaking the Spaghetti Monster," focused on how they extracted a challenging functionality and designed a new event-sourced system to coexist seamlessly with the existing legacy setup. They shared valuable insights into managing data flow, ensuring the system remained continuously available for customers and stakeholders throughout the transition.

Leon shared afterward: "What a blast I had yesterday at the Scala Matters meetup with Adevinta & Marktplaats. Thank you very much to the organizers, and thank you for all the great questions after the talk!"

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Building Highly Scalable, Performant, and Available Services Using Scala

In New York, Ben Manning, Vice President of Platform Services, and Luka Jacobowitz, Staff Software Engineer at SiriusXM, delivered an insightful talk on developing high-performing, highly available services. Leading a team of around 250 engineers, Ben detailed how SiriusXM builds and operates the services that power SiriusXM and Pandora. He provided an overview of SiriusXM’s background, discussed the challenges of creating scalable and reliable services with Scala, and highlighted how the use of Smithy, an API contract-first development framework, streamlines service design and implementation.

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Scala on 3 Platforms: Expanding Horizons

Reid Spencer’s talk focused on Scala’s improving support for JVM, JavaScript, and Native platforms. While the ecosystem is already quite usable, Reid noted some quirks remain, though helpful support is available through the Scala.js and Scala Native channels on the Scala Discord. He expressed optimism that Scala will not only catch up to Kotlin in platform support but eventually surpass it, with these quirks being resolved over time for a more seamless experience.

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Building Connections and Driving Innovation

The evening concluded with casual networking sessions over drinks, allowing participants to strengthen connections and share ideas. Events like these go beyond being simple learning opportunities—they foster a sense of community, promote collaboration, and inspire attendees to explore new possibilities. By showcasing real-world examples and success stories, both gatherings provided valuable insights and practical solutions to help participants tackle their unique challenges.

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Looking Ahead: The Future of Scala and Software Engineering

With the growing importance of Scala in the software engineering and AI fields, events like Scala Matters Meetup offer an invaluable platform for professionals to connect, learn, and innovate. As UMATR continues to support the Scala community and contribute to the hiring of top-tier Scala engineers, stay tuned for more Scala recruitment events and opportunities to connect with the brightest minds in data engineering and software development.

Don’t miss the next opportunity to connect with the brightest minds in tech. Stay tuned for more events that bring the Scala community together.

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