[manx]

From my own experience, I can recommend learning Scala. First, you treat is as a nicer Java, but then while trying to write more Scala idiomatic code, you smoothly slip into the world of functional programming. Sometimes without even noticing it, e.g. you are using monads (Option, Future) before knowing what a monad is.

[hmm_really]

Too much language/syntax to learn in my opinion, prefer something succinct that I can build up from.

[manx]

Learning an entirely new and different language has a much higher barrier to start, in my opinion. Coming from procedural programming, a language that transforms your thinking smoothly is a good tradeoff I think.