Scala is an amazingly powerful tool for all sorts of applications, from web and mobile to desktop and the cloud. Monadic patterns in Scala let me express both sequential and asynchronous data flows easier than ever. I could use these patterns in an SBT plugin for submitting solutions to Google Code Jam problems where I could link together REST requests with local computations. Scala futures and Akka let me scale bioinformatics algorithms both up and out. Scala.js let me use bioinformatics algorithms in the browser—one language to rule them all! Combining Scala.js and Play helped me build web applications that are easy to use and fun to build! In this talk, I will present a variety of projects that show Scala's power and versatility.

Scala is a modern programming language used by companies such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Coursera that lets you do everything from developing websites, creating games, making apps, and more! It also happens to be a great language to get started with programming. In this workshop, we'll start with simple exercises leading up to drawing fractal based graphics, ending with hints on doing even more with Scala. This workshop is targeted for 4th graders and up, so bring in your laptop and a lot of enthusiasm!