Re: [scala] Scala Marketing Challenge

Josh Suereth wrote:
> 2) What do you think Scala needs to do to "market" itself to the Java
> Community
-Via university courses yielding a generation of Scala native speakers.
Scala's theoretical superiority, functional style, and academic origins
make it a good fit for university teaching
- Published books that teach the language
- Published books & articles that teach/use Scala to build typical Java
apps eg interop with JEE Webapps, Hibernate, Spring, Swing, JSP
- Continue to improve the Scala IDE plugin offerings
- Example apps/sites/success stories built in Scala

Personally, I think Scala would have been more easily adopted by the
Java "mass-market" if it were closer to Java's feel (cf Groovy). The
differences, while seemingly superficial, make for a steep learning
curve for Java refugees (like myself). Programming language punctuation
is strongly emotional for many people. Coming from Java, even if you
don't explore the extended capabilities of Scala, you must unlearn/learn
remappings like
    "<type> <name>" => "<name>: <type>"
     "void" =>"Unit"
     "a[i]" => "a(i)"
     "<T>" => "[T]"
Im frankly dubious about the willingness of many of my workmates to ever
make that discomforting transition, unless their job required it.

So I expect the user-base will expand through (a) a younger generation
who learn Scala early, (b) atypically smart &/ frustrated Javans.

-Ben