The 2nd slide speaks volumes, his commit history vs. that of Odersky.

PaulP was trying to strip down the language while Odersky was adding on to it. The two must have been butting heads behind the scenes, and Odersky, the creator of Scala, probably wasn't wanting to follow PaulP's crazy wisdom.

Sucks, that's a lot of talent going out the window with PaulP's departure, big shoes to fill.