I think that many of these criticisms, while perhaps valid in some ways, are unfair. Why single out Scala, when other, more popular languages have these same is

I think that many of these criticisms, while perhaps valid in some ways, are unfair. Why single out Scala, when other, more popular languages have these same issues? The intent of this post seems to be to discourage using Scala on any project again, but it is difficult for me to discern the proposed alternative. Is it Haskell? A fine language, but seems to lack the tools that even Scala has, and it's not on the JVM. Is it JavaScript? Java? I'm not sure which comparisons to make. So to address each point: The compile times criticism is probably one of the more valid ones. Was incremental compilation enabled in Gradle, though? It was only specified that daemon mode was used. The libraries and community criticism, I think, is completely unfair. There are lemons in every community. Part of getting to know an ecosystem is learning the parts you don't like. For example, I don't think that anyone should attack the entire Java ecosystem simply because Java EE with its EJBs exists, or because Struts exists, or WebSphere. Is the magic syntax criticism specific to Spray and SBT? But I thought that Gradle was the build system, and that's in Groovy. I'm a bit confused, here. Again I think this is about picking libraries you find readable, and again I think it is not fair to judge an entire ecosystem because of one or two bad library choices. The HTTP header criticism...is this about Spray again? Not using Scala because it doesn't have Hindley-Milner type inference is not fair, either. This seems like an unusual standard for which to hold any language, really. Is it only ML languages like Haskell that have this? Really I'm not sure why any or all of these would make Scala an inaccessible language, or even what inaccessible means in this context. Is it simply that Scala has too many language features? So should we all go back to BASIC? Or is Java the answer? But wait, Java is adding more language features, too! Where do we draw the line? In the Java world, there are so many libraries that provide the functionality that Scala has baked in. Are using third-party libraries such as Guava, Project Lombok, and LambdaJ really preferable to using Scala? I definitely agree that you can make code unreadable by using too many language features or libraries, but it should be agreed upon what the best practices are for a project between its developers. For instance, on a Java project, everyone might be using JUnit and Mockito for unit testing. Then one day, a single developer decides he wants to introduce PowerMock or something, instead. His pairing partner could explain to him why this is a bad idea; or it could be rejected in a code review or similar. The same idea holds for Scala, I think. If not everyone understands something like implicit types, they should be avoided.