I'm biased as I already knew Java when I learned Scala, but Scala, if you ignore the crazy parts (e.g. don't look at the scala own sources for example) then it's quite a simple language. Much simpler than Java in my very humble opinion, it feels a lot like Ruby / Python to me actually. Another advantage I find in Scala, is that for new learners, they get the safeguard of a typed language and all the protection that comes with it, if you write incorrect syntax, you get an immediate feedback, and for new learners, I think it's a great feedback loop. Although I really like Python, I found that implementing things in it for the Udacity CS courses for example, is much harder for me (just because I'm less familiar with Python probably) than Scala, I tried implementing the same homework in Scala, and it was much more intuitive, especially collection handling, and writing "functional style" code, and I didn't have to go to the web and read the docs every seconds because of the notorious, loved to be hated, heavy but yet spoiling comfort of the IDE's content assist. Anyway, it's a matter of taste, and I like the Scala flavor. But here I am spending more time on the Ruby tutorial than on the Play framework tutorial, so I guess the language itself is not all that matters...