These 'look how these 4 lines of Java translate into 2 lines of Scala' don't really convince me to start using it. It would be a nice to see a more structural example. Like a real world app. Anything available that is open source?

I think the best justification for using scala is that on one hand you have a very nice language which is maintained by some very smart people and has a lot of nice things that are otherwise only available with ocaml,sml, haskell, scheme, or F#, and on the other hand the programs are running on one of the best just in time compilation virtual machines that exist. Thats a very very nice combo.

[note for clarity: by smart, I mean the maintainers/designers are folks with phd's whose careers are dedicated to understanding how to design useful/powerful programming languages]

Try these, for starters:

http://github.com/robey/kestrel/tree/master

http://github.com/dpp/lift-samples/tree/master ( http://github.com/dpp/liftweb/tree/master )

Thanks. I'm reading the Kestrel source and it looks very interesting.

I've been considering having a look at Scala as the next potential language that I'll learn.

It looks pretty nice. I'd add another point to the article - what I've seen of the community from mailing lists and such has been very positive. It seems like they're all (or mostly) very smart and welcoming.

The section regarding pure functions doesn't inspire me much about using Scala in a "functional way".

Scala is not only means [A Ladder; Stairs], But also A Rock, in Slavic languages... And Marin (the creator of Scala) has polish last name, and most probably is polish..

I don't know what slavic languages you have in mind, but in Polish, Scala does NOT mean a rock, it means "combines"

in slovak and czech language, scala is pronounced the same as 'skala', that means rock.