Understanding syntax is a very small part of understanding a programming language. It takes a long time after you've grasped the syntax of a language to begin t

Understanding syntax is a very small part of understanding a programming language. It takes a long time after you've grasped the syntax of a language to begin to understand its idioms and best practices. A talented programmer can pick up a new syntax in a few weeks, picking up a new paradigm takes much longer. The primary obstacle in learning both Clojure and Scala, I would say, is understanding the functional programming paradigm. In that sense, they're not so different.