[tsotha]

>I think the prime reason for this is that scala permits operator overloading; more than that, in fact, almost every character can be an identifier.

I've been toying with the idea of trying scala for a serious project for a few months, and this part scares me. It's so obviously a bad idea it makes me wonder what other dumb things are in there.

[soc88]

Scala doesn't permit operator overloading, it doesn't even have operators.

[tsotha]

Well, that's true, technically. But can't you name your functions things like "++"?

[soc88]

Yes. Because Scala doesn't make up random rules about how you name your methods.

If you name your method addAll or ++ is pretty much the same. The same rules apply to both. Both can be called the same way:

    coll1.addAll(coll2)        coll1.++(coll2)
    coll1 addAll coll2         coll1 ++ coll2

[tsotha]

Those "random rules" make the code base much easier to read. This kind of thing is a big step backwards for people working on large projects, especially people who need to come up to speed on a large code base.