I think that's definitely it. That old Dispatch periodic table has done a lot of damage to Scala's reputation IMO (even though it's no longer used by Dispatch)

I think that's definitely it. That old Dispatch periodic table has done a lot of damage to Scala's reputation IMO (even though it's no longer used by Dispatch). Looking at the major Scala libraries and frameworks today, I don't see a ton of symbolic operators in use. Akka just has ! and ? (both of which have very obvious uses once you understand actors), Play only uses them for iteratees (which most devs will never have to think about, plus it provides named equivalents for all of them), SBT has been cutting back. Outside of scalaz, the problem seems to be under control.