Scala was terrible two years ago. All the tools were broken, and every point release broke binary compatibility, so that jar dependency hell was amplified immensely.
Now, there's things I don't like, but it all mostly just works. It seems like this started around 2.10. So I just appreciate a language that is more expressive than Java, with all the things I like about the jvm.
Maybe someday Kotlin or Ceylon or Java 9 will be better but for now Scala is the best choice.
Being a "better" alternative to Java (edit: as kasey says, targeting the JVM) doesn't sound like a bad place to be :) .
It's on my "to-try" list but the little development I do nowadays is on the .NET platform.
Which other environments do you think would benefit from trying Scala, or are bashing Scala? C / C++ ? Node? Edit2: it seems Ruby or Python people wouldn't like Scala. Me, I like static typing.