That's just the thing, Scala and its ecosystem had these problems right at the height of its popularity, meaning that the situation was the worst right when the

That's just the thing, Scala and its ecosystem had these problems right at the height of its popularity, meaning that the situation was the worst right when the most people were around to experience it, and understandably many never looked back. Even if many individuals can look past it, it's become a very hard sell to teams. It's the same story with any kind of merit vs trust. When you have a clean slate, you can build trust based on your merit, but once you break trust, merit alone isn't enough to win it back. In this industry in particular, far too many other options are already holding and building trust. I truly wish Scala had indeed become the mainstream industry language instead of say Go. I hope Rust polishes off its rough edges and succeeds where Scala failed and where Go doesn't go far enough. But I don't see any future where Scala regains industry relevance, not even if both Go and Rust self-destruct as well.