To get the most out of this book

1. We expect the reader to be comfortable with structuring and implementing simple programs in Scala and familiar with SBT and REPL. No previous knowledge of reactive programming, Akka, or microservices is required, but familiarity with the underlying concepts would be beneficial.
2. To work with the code examples in this book, Java 1.8+ and SBT 1.2+ need to be installed. The installation of Git is recommended to simplify checking out the source code from GitHub. For those readers who don't have the prerequisite software ready, we provide installation instructions for Java and SBT in Appendix A.