I took that quote to mean he wanted Scala to be idiomatic. There's much mileage to be had from linguistic idiomaticity. Like you said, "software patterns tend

I took that quote to mean he wanted Scala to be idiomatic. There's much mileage to be had from linguistic idiomaticity. Like you said, "software patterns tend to help drive synergy." I don't think your opinion and the authors are all that far apart.