Merge pull request #1231 from scalacenter/effective-programming-scala-course

Announce Effective Programming in Scala and other MOOCs updates

Author: julienrf

blog/_posts/2021-05-17-effective-programming-scala-course.md

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+---
+layout: blog-detail
+post-type: blog
+by: Julien Richard-Foy
+title: "New Online Course: Effective Programming in Scala"
+---
+
+We are excited to announce that our new MOOC “Effective Programming in Scala” is now
+live on Coursera! We are also happy to share that most of our existing courses have already
+been updated to Scala 3.
+
+## Effective Programming in Scala
+
+The [Effective Programming in Scala] course aims to teach non-Scala programmers everything
+they need to become professional Scala 3 programmers in six weeks. This course shows you how
+to embrace both functional programming and object-oriented programming in a simple and
+practical way to write software at scale. It explains how to achieve typical programming
+tasks in Scala, such as modeling business domains, breaking down complex problems into
+simpler problems, manipulating data, or running parallel tasks. Throughout the course, you
+will also learn the best practices for writing high-quality Scala code that scales to large
+applications, how to handle errors, how to write tests, and how to leverage a productive
+development environment.
+
+The course features six auto-graded programming assignments, which have been designed to
+be both fun and close to real-world programs. Topics covered by the assignments include
+graphical animations, web applications, property-based testing, generic programming,
+and parallel data processing.
+
+Each week contains several video lectures of ~10 minutes each. Lectures are focused on
+a specific skill or concept, and they are generally followed by a quiz so that you
+can immediately assess your understanding of the lesson.
+
+The syllabus is organized as follows:
+
+- week 1: basics of the language, and how to model business
+  domains with sealed traits and case classes,
+- week 2: manipulate collections of data with the standard library,
+  and write business logic,
+- week 3: tooling around the Scala language (IDE, build tools,
+  debuggers), organize large programs into modules,
+- week 4: reason about code, write unit tests, property-based tests, and
+  integration tests in Scala,
+- week 5: contextual abstractions (aka “implicits” in Scala 2),
+- week 6: error handling, data validation, and concurrent programming.
+
+The course has been co-designed by myself (Julien Richard-Foy) and [Noel Welsh].
+Noel Welsh has a long experience in teaching Scala, both in the industry and
+within the [Scala Bridge] project.
+
+Check out this video for more details about the course Effective Programming in Scala:
+
+<div style="text-align: center;">
+  <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MSDJ7ehjrqo" title="Effective Programming in Scala teaser" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+</div>
+
+## Other Scala Courses
+
+The Scala Center and Martin Odersky have also been working hard to update all our
+existing courses to Scala 3 (except the courses that use Spark, which still use
+Scala 2.12).
+
+This is a huge effort, and some parts are still in progress. Here is the current
+status, at the time this blog is written:
+
+- The [Scala Specialization] is a suite of five courses that teach Scala and
+  data processing (possibly in parallel or distributed),
+  - [Functional Programming Principles in Scala]: all the lectures and
+    assignments have been updated to Scala 3,
+  - [Functional Program Design]: all the lectures and assignments have been
+    updated to Scala 3,
+  - [Parallel Programming]: only the assignments have been updated to Scala 3,
+  - [Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark]: still on Scala 2.12,
+  - [Functional Programming in Scala Capstone]: still on Scala 2.12,
+- [Programming Reactive Systems]: only the assignments have been updated to Scala 3.
+
+We will update our Spark courses to Scala 3 as soon as there is a stable release of
+Spark that supports Scala 3.
+
+The [Scala Specialization] always points to the latest version of the courses (we
+will roll out the Scala 3 versions in the coming weeks).
+Nevertheless, in case you want to access the Scala 2 version of the courses, they
+are still available here:
+
+- [Functional Programming Principles in Scala (Scala 2 version)]
+- [Functional Program Design in Scala (Scala 2 version)]
+- [Parallel Programming (Scala 2 version)]
+- [Programming Reactive Systems (Scala 2 version)]
+
+[Effective Programming in Scala]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/effective-scala
+[Noel Welsh]: https://noelwelsh.com/
+[Scala Bridge]: https://scalabridge.org/
+[Scala Specialization]: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/scala
+[Functional Programming Principles in Scala]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1
+[Functional Program Design]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun2
+[Parallel Programming]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/parprog1
+[Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala-spark-big-data
+[Functional Programming in Scala Capstone]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala-capstone
+[Programming Reactive Systems]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala-akka-reactive
+[Functional Programming Principles in Scala (Scala 2 version)]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala2-functional-programming
+[Functional Program Design in Scala (Scala 2 version)]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala2-functional-program-design
+[Parallel Programming (Scala 2 version)]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala2-parrallel-programming
+[Programming Reactive Systems (Scala 2 version)]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala2-akka-reactive