The chief problem with this is that a big part of Scala's value proposition is its integration with the JVM. In fact, a lot of the more awkward bits of Scala (a

The chief problem with this is that a big part of Scala's value proposition is its integration with the JVM. In fact, a lot of the more awkward bits of Scala (and Clojure) are the price that has to paid to interoperate with Java. It's worth it for predominantly Java shops but for people already outside of that ecosystem it just looks like baggage. For people without debts to the JVM I think it would make as much sense to just jump to Haskell.