[kitd]

Scala was the first serious attempt to break Java's stranglehold on the JVM that made any impact. A lot of people got very excited by it.

But then Kotlin, Ceylon, Clojure and others started to steal it's thunder and now it's just "one of the pack".

In fact, I'd say Java itself has stolen back from all those other languages to a large extent, with its language enhancements since v8.

[blandflakes]

With the exception of Ceylon (because it's basically dead), there's actually a really nice gradient on the JVM these days:

Clojure is a nice, expressive, dynamic language that is really great for messing with arbitrarily-shaped data.

Java is a workhorse language that has been powering businesses small and large for decades.

Kotlin is a modern spin on Java, and the degree to which they share functionality (with differing or identical semantics) over time will be interesting.

And then Scala exists for all your meta-type-wankery needs.

It seems natural that Kotlin/Java would be most popular over time, with Clojure and Scala hanging out with small amounts of market share.