I like Scala, but I'm a bit troubled by this comment in the blurb<p><i>The talk will briefly cover the conceptual hurdles that the team experienced when changing from a purely object-oriented mindset to a more functional approach.</i><p>I think herein lies the problem with Scala, while it's great to do some functional programming, the functional element is largely idiomatic and not enforced.<p>You can easily rewrite a Java application in OO Scala with mutable state. Or you can do it with immutable objects and so on but I don't like the way that it's so easy to combine the two that it kinds of turns into a mess if you're not an expert in either camp.<p>The Java interoperability is a nice touch but again, it mixes the two paradigms for me<p>Unless I'm just doing it wrong? I'm not sure but for me I'm always wondering what the "right way" is in Scala and it irritates me. Don't get me wrong, it's a great language and much better than Java (a lot better) but it sometimes feels like a mix of ideas.<p>That's why I'm learning Haskell now, to try and embed myself in a world that's purely functional and not a half way house.