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I was working through the coursera functional programming course on scala which is modeled on SICP. While the content is really good, it suffers from the same problems pointed out by Dr Harvey. Getting used to scala syntax takes time while Scheme was a breeze.

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Yeah, Scala is the new C++ - immensely powerful but there's ten different ways to do everything.

I like the language, but I'm simultaneously disgusted by it.

Trying to have a small language sometimes results in allowing (or having to allow it in the sense of not outlawing it) multiple ways to do the same thing, especially as the expressiveness increases.

As an example, I don't think Python's “there's only one way to do it”-approach would have a chance of surviving if the language was as expressive as Scala.

In the end, as long as Scala stays simpler than Java 8 and vastly simpler than F#, C# and C++, it's good enough for me.

"there's ten different ways to do everything"

I believe this observation is a bit misleading. Indeed, Scala does offer some alternatives, but these are helpful in the transition from other languages with less powerful type systems. Idiomatic Scala is not really a hodge-podge of choices.

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