You'll level up much faster with an IDE (IMO). Ensime in Sublime is kinda pointless I think since it only updates on file change. The REPL and SBT integration

You'll level up much faster with an IDE (IMO). Ensime in Sublime is kinda pointless I think since it only updates on file change. The REPL and SBT integration is nice. I use Sublime for quick examples in Scala, or as a VIM alternative for larger projects (as opposed to my main editor like with Ruby). For most of my Scala work I use IntelliJ though. The lack of half-decent theming in Eclipse and Preferences/Settings being all over the place really puts me off ScalaIDE personally. Going from Zero to Code in IntelliJ and SBT (on OSX) is pretty trivial. Given a command-line "Hello World" with a traditional Maven layout: First, install IntelliJ, navigate to "Plugins" under preferences and install the Scala plugin. Now make sure you have Homebrew installed (http://brew.sh http://brew.sh) $ brew update $ brew install sbt --devel # currently 0.13.0-RC5 $ cd ~/src/ $ mkdir hello-world $ cd hello-world $ mkdir project $ echo "sbt.version=0.13.0-RC5" | tee project/build.properties $ cat <<EOS | tee project/plugins.sbt resolvers += "Sonatype snapshots" at "http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/" addSbtPlugin("com.github.mpeltonen" % "sbt-idea" % "1.5.0-SNAPSHOT") EOS $ cat <<EOS | tee build.sbt name := "hello-world" version := "1.0-SNAPSHOT" EOS $ mkdir -p src/main/scala $ cat <<EOS | tee src/main/scala/Whatever.scala object Whatever extends App { println("Hello World!") } EOS $ sbt > compile > gen-idea > run And there you go. It could be simpler if we were having a LOC competition, but this is actually very close to the exact setup I use for projects day in and day out, including getting a jump on the next version of SBT and best-practicey stuff like setting the SBT version in build.properties. If this were a Play app, you might have a "project/plugins.sbt" that looked something like this (to get a jump on the upcoming Scala 2.10 version of Play, that integrates with SBT 0.13.x): // Comment to get more information during initialization logLevel := Level.Warn resolvers := Seq("Maven Central" at "http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/", "Typesafe Snapshots" at "http://repo.typesafe.com/typesafe/snapshots/", "Typesafe Releases" at "http://repo.typesafe.com/typesafe/releases/", "Sonatype snapshots" at "http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/") addSbtPlugin("com.typesafe.play" % "sbt-plugin" % "2.2.0-M2") addSbtPlugin("com.github.mpeltonen" % "sbt-idea" % "1.5.0-SNAPSHOT") This just adds a few more common resolvers you might use for dependencies, and locks you to the latest Play milestone snapshot. You can pretty much otherwise copy/paste files/folders from a sample Play app, like you might see with the Typesafe Activator for example. Good luck!