Scala for Java programmers

There are many languages that target to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) -- not just the scripting and dynamically typed ones. How about learning another statically typed language that is compiled JVM and seamlessly integrates to the Java platform? The latest mantra is "One Great VM, Many Languages", Right? :-)

We will look at - Scala? - a functional, object-oriented and concurrent language that runs on the Java platform. Note: this is not a language comparison exercise [i.e., X versus Y comparison to "conclude" which one is better!]. Rather, it is an attempt to give head-start to the Java programmers who want to learn other languages that run on the Java platform. So, the aim is same as it was for my blog past entries such as Java, Groovy and (J)Ruby, Java, JavaScript and Jython - except that we are now looking at a statically typed language...