Personally I never want to touch Scala again. Implicit and operator overloading hell. Let alone the shit show that is sbt and c++ compile times from scalac.

Yes, I've been bitten by that too!

Ironically it pushed me back towards Groovy because I found I was constantly hitting unexpected performance bottlenecks by implicit conversions that unexpectedly jumped in and executed things I didn't even realise were happening. Groovy was completely unelegant but pragmatic option that actually did what I expected most of the time.

I'm more of a Java man myself. I like groovy though, it feels like a more functional python. I could see myself using it just for scripts.

Not sure what to say to that, except that it might have been a long time ago, or with some very specific libraries or teams?

If it was years ago, then I can say that things have changed a lot since the last time you touched Scala, and in the right direction. Most of the criticisms from, say, 5 years ago, are being addressed.

For example, if by "operator overloading" you mean "symbolic method names", then those have largely fallen out of fashion. sbt has seen huge improvements (some people dislike it, some people like it, but it's one of the most powerful build tools out there). Compilation times also have improved.

As far as I am concerned, it is my favorite language, and there is so much going for it: great tooling, the upcoming 3 version, binary compatibility improvements, rock-solid JavaScript compilation, native compilation under development, and, of course, all the benefits from a language with one of the most powerful types systems around.

Both of you are right. You happen to be a “Java pro” who knows how to use the tool well. It’s a bit uphill for shops without Java experience - more uphill than with other languages, perhaps.