In my experience, it's easier for many developers to blame the tools and language rather than admit the dumpster fire of a codebase was entirely their doing and their responsibility.
fentanyl is 50-100x more potent than morphine. Its still the user's fault for overdosing, but overdosing is easier to do with fent.
Pepsi is more potent (sugar) than an apple, easier to get fat. Still the consumer's fault.
My point is the choice of language may require more energy to enforce better code practices. Scala is so feature packed that it makes it easy for a developer to... overdose.
Counterpoint. A focus on type-safety makes Scala less likely to suffer from too-clever-by-half solutions. Sometimes a group of developers will be smart enough to create an overly-complicated solution that still type checks and works (see the original Slick library...) but for most normal teams, the compiler is a guard against overly ambitious type magic.
On the other hand, I've seen my fair share of too-clever uses of runtime reflection (Java) or weird metaprogramming (Python/JS) techniques, except they were not only too-clever but actually just didn't work and would fail miserably at inopportune times.
A more complicated language needs more skills and more skills mean you are inexperienced in at least some of those skills and inexperience causes dumpster fire codebases.
When I started software development I had "hammer and nail syndrome" for absolutely everything. I figured out something new and then used it everywhere. Experimenting in this way is necessary but you absolutely want to avoid it in a production codebase. Over time you have run out of hammers and nails to play around with. You've developed the ability to judge where and when a specific hammer is most effective and when it shouldn't be used at all. Scala offers you a wide variety of hammers and nails. You'll have to experiment a lot.
Pepsi is more potent (sugar) than an apple, easier to get fat. Still the consumer's fault.
My point is the choice of language may require more energy to enforce better code practices. Scala is so feature packed that it makes it easy for a developer to... overdose.