[dextorious]

<b>However, any Java programmers could have made the switch to Clojure or Scala to keep working with the JVM.</b>

A lot of Java programmers can't stand Clojure and Scala. It's not like functional languages have any real adoption (> 5%) in the industry...

[viraptor]

Scala is not really functional. Or at least it doesn't force you to write anything in a functional way.

I'd say it's about as functional as Python... which did get a lot of traction lately in various different places.