Me too, but I'm just listening to what some Python/Ruby/Node developers tell me - "yes, we know your guys are 'smarter' - but we prefer our 'stupid' and shorter

Me too, but I'm just listening to what some Python/Ruby/Node developers tell me - "yes, we know your guys are 'smarter' - but we prefer our 'stupid' and shorter / more fun way to do things". In other words, this is a major put off and a hurdle preventing Scala / Java to gain more followers. Developers are lazy by nature, and syntactic sugar does matter. If not, we would have all still be writing in assembly.