"I need to write code to get things done. "

Yes. But their cultures are a little different.

C++ I think is 1/2 academic, 1/2 Engineering - with a lot of voices, and a lot of anachronistic 'grey beards' arguing over stuff. Even for Java, James Gosling said 'Sun less less a company than it is a debating society'.

Scala is almost purely academic - but driven by a single person / small team. Scala was not designed to solve an Engineering problem, thus it seems a little 'intellectually masturbatory' (pardon the term).

Scala is way to hard to learn - partly because it's a 'new paradigm' but partly for the reasons aforementioned. So it's only going to make it's way into production for specific entities.

Scala may have a 'big future' if tutorials, training and approaches settle down on commonly accepted standards and practices.