I'm not a Scala guy, but I think Scala allows one to write less complex code than is typically written in Java (1.7 or lower). Let's not confuse the complexity

I'm not a Scala guy, but I think Scala allows one to write less complex code than is typically written in Java (1.7 or lower). Let's not confuse the complexity of the language itself, with the typical complexity of idiomatic code written in the language. Ruby is about as complex of a language as there is, the syntax and formal language spec are nothing short of baroque, but its flexibility and expressiveness allows you to write succinct, drop-dead simple code in it, that could only be expressed with pages of boilerplate in Java. Adding functional features to Java will make its spec and implementation more complex, but it can make actual Java code less complex.