Time to take Scala more seriously. WIth Java Stalwarts jumping onto Scala bandwagon, it looks like it will supplant Java in the near future.

Neal Gafter, another influential Java stalwart, has been a fan of Scala for quite a while:

"Will Scala be the next great language? Only time will tell. Martin Odersky and his team certainly have the taste and skill for the job. One thing is sure: Scala sets a new standard against which future languages will be measured."

I think that's pretty bullish. I would agree it will become more important, but surpassing Java? That is a very long way off if in fact it would ever happen. A lot of the Java world is very skeptical of Scala.

I think Scala appeals more to people who have background with functional languages (or languages with functional features such as Ruby) who want the performance and capability of the JVM without Java.

Scala is neat. Lift is a bit weird, but Play Framework supports Scala without venturing too far off the easily understandable MVC pattern. It's a cool language that certainly makes the JVM a better platform.

Ok, now I want to learn more about Scala. Hats the best way f learning, and what's the be IDE?

So, twitter has a nice tutorial called Scala School (http://twitter.github.com/scala_school) and of course the official site (http://docs.scala-lang.org/tutorials/) has also some tutorials for programmers coming from other languages.

So what's the best IDE? If you're an eclipse user, it's Scala IDE (http://scala-ide.org/). You can find a full download eclipse + Scala IDE plugins on the typesafe homepage (http://typesafe.com/stack/scala_ide_download). If you're an IntelliJ user like myself you just need to install the Scala plugin.

Both IDE's have there drawbacks, none is perfect. I guess the easiest way to start is using the Scala IDE.

To test your new Scala skills you may want to solve some puzzles (http://scalapuzzles.org).

Have fun!

There's a Coursera course by Martin Odersky going on at the moment (https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class/index).

Just as a side note, this is not a 'learn Scala' class. This is learning functional programming using Scala as the functional language. So, you won't get a lot of info on how Scala's complex type system works. But, this would be a great class if you are not familiar with functional languages (or what functional means). The functional aspect is very easily transferrable to other functional languages as the application is very close in all other functional languages (just as imperative OO language semantics such Java, C#, Ruby, Scala etc. are easily transferred).

It's true that this is not primarily a "learn Scala" class; we will concentrate on the purely functional subset. But types won't be omitted. We will focus on Scala's type system in week 4 of the class.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that I find the course content to be extraordinarily well designed. The lectures seem to hit all the right notes at the right moments, the homework is exercising the right muscles, and the grading does an excellent job of guiding us towards good test-driven-development and away from mutable state, etc.

In short: thank you, bravo, and encore!

If you're coming from Java, I recommend the Scala for Java Refugees[1] series of blog posts. If you're interested more in the functional side, there is a course by Odersky on Coursera right now.

I haven't found any Scala IDEs stable or enjoyable yet. I've been using [insert favorite editor] with sbt[2].

[1] http://www.codecommit.com/blog/scala/roundup-scala-for-java-...

[2] https://github.com/harrah/xsbt/wiki

Best introductory text: http://horstmann.com/scala/

Best IDE: IntelliJ community edition (free) + Free Scala plugin http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/