[happy_dino]

> How easy is it to find a Scala developer if you need to expand your team compared to a Java developer?

How easy is it to find a GOOD developer? Much easier with Scala. It's not like wading through hundreds of Java resumes and interviewing them is free.

> In addition, Scala tends to run slower than Java which can have a further cost if you're scaling to many servers.

This depends on so much different factors in both Java and Scala that I'm happy to dismiss this claim as “not true”.

> Porting Java code to Android is also far easier than porting Scala code.

Really? Is there anything more to do than ProGuarding and dexing the existing code, both in Java and Scala?

[wheaties]

Yes, Android's Garbage Collector is a one legged mule. Slow, crippled and needy. Scala, on the other hand, generates a ton of little objects. I'm a full time Scala dev but if I were doing Android I'd probably for the foreseeable future work in... dare I say it? Java.

[brodo]

Scala creates a ton of little objects? Are you aware that primitive types are only converted to objects in Scala, if they are used as objects?

[kasey_junk]

Sure but every anonymous function call creates new objects, as do each call to the collections library methods (often many objects), for comprehensions, tuple creation, lazy vals, pattern matching, futures, options etc. all create objects.

If you are programming in a functional paradigm you will be throwing off garbage, often when you wouldn't expect to from a cursory glance at the code.

You can mitigate it, but often to do so you have to resort to writing scala as java (which is still better than java as java).