Implicit type conversion is often noted as a misfeature of C++ and PHP. I've never used them in Scala myself, but they are highlighted as a positive feature of

Implicit type conversion is often noted as a misfeature of C++ and PHP. I've never used them in Scala myself, but they are highlighted as a positive feature of Scala in this article, and I am inclined to believe the author when he says they are. The insight here was just that implicit type conversion is very bad when you don't know it's happening. When you DO know it's happening -- because you imported the conversions -- and it's used to save brainstrokes ("codetree nodes"), then it can be very helpful.