I went from only doing PHP to working in Scala so it can be done. You'll need to do a fair bit of learning on the side if, like me, you were more of a 'PHP-deve

I went from only doing PHP to working in Scala so it can be done. You'll need to do a fair bit of learning on the side if, like me, you were more of a 'PHP-developer' than 'developer' (by which I mean your CS knowledge and broader programming knowledge was lacking). But if you are already familiar with functional programming, data structures, etc., then it will be straightforward as Scala has a nice syntax - at least, it does for a C-style language. On the frameworks debate, I've found in the past that trying to use a large framework and learn a language at the same time is just too difficult because you are overloading the learning. Sticking to Scalatra here might help because you don't need to work hard to understand the framework, so you can focus on making your app and learning Scala. Play is probably nice once you understand it, but they'll be a lot more domain knowledge needed to use it effectively.