The document provides an overview of distributed systems in Scala using Finagle. It introduces Scala concepts like functions, futures, and options. It then explains how Finagle allows building asynchronous client-server applications using a "service" abstraction where a service is a function that takes a request and returns a future response. It describes how to create HTTP clients and servers as services and how to compose services using filters. It also covers metrics collection and Finatra, which integrates Finagle with a Sinatra-like DSL.