Bill Venners

After completing about 40% of the book according to my Kindle for iPad this is what I have to say.

Things I love about the book:
(1) the Kindle for iPad edition was very well formatted (has a hyperlinked table of contents, hyperlinks throughout the book, chapters start on a new page, well formatted and easy to read code examples)

Things I like about the book:
(1) thorough (the book covers a lot of material)
(2) clearly written with no obvious typos/errors
(3) liked the way each chapter was organized. An Introduction followed by a more thorough discussion of the topic at hand followed by a summary of what was covered
(4) This book will work well as a reference after reading it as it is organized well enough that you can jump straight to a particular topic

Things I dislike about the book:
(1) choice of chapter order was not apparent to me. The book feels more like a lot of very well written tutorials, each covering a well defined topic, instead of a single unified tutorial (which is what I was expecting) with the goal of taking the reader from novice to a more advanced level.
(2) code examples are more complicated than they need to be
(3) the Kindle ebook does not have page numbers

Other thoughts:
I am of the opinion that this book will not get you up and running quickly. You have to read quite a bit before you get to a point where you can write useful code (I would suggest reading at least up to and including chapter 17 -- My Kindle tells me this is 38% of the book -- when you consider that the paperback version has 852 pages, 38% translates to around 320 pages of book material). Also, I believe that Scala is different enough from other languages I have used or studied that I think that (at least parts of) the book would have required a second reading or I would have to have followed up this book with a different book (I did something similar -- see More on getting up to speed quickly below) before I could be effective with the language.

More on getting up to speed quickly:
Before writing this review I also started taking the Coursera course (www.coursera.org) on Functional Programming using Scala taught by one the authors (Odersky). The course material is available even though the class has ended. There are only 7 days of college course style lectures with each day’s lecture lasting between 1 and 2 hours. If you want to get up to speed quickly, I highly recommend that course. I was up and running after the first day’s lecture. The course is a good way to follow up on the material in the book.

Finally:
I gave this book five stars because this book is superior to other programming books I have read in terms how it is written (format), the material it contains (quantity and quality), how clearly that material is presented (readability), and how long I think the material will remain useful for (durability). I do not rank a lot of my books with 5 stars. I believe that I got a very good bang for the buck.
… (altro)

This is the best general book on Scala programming language. The stress is on the 'general' part, because there are other books for specific aspects of Scala programming, such as Actors, or books focusing on mastering functional programming. There are also books that may suit you better for understanding some of the concepts. But for experienced programmers mainly coming from a Java, C# or C++ background and who want a healthy combination of tutorial and reference for Scala, 'Programming in Scala, Second Edition' is worth its price and deserves its place not on the library but on the table. Even moderately experienced Scala programmers will find themselves returning to this book for refreshing their understanding of fundamental and important concepts, and newcomers to the language will enjoy new perspectives explained using very concrete examples that they can immediately apply in their JVM development environment.… (altro)