[pron]

I wouldn't say it's more elegant than Scala, because, unlike, say, Clojure or Haskell, elegance doesn't seem to be a central design requirement of Kotlin's, but it is far easier to understand, learn and master. I think Scala pays a tremendous cost in complexity for its features. Kotlin gives you all of those features that would interest all but avid Haskellers (and those would be better off with Haskell than with Scala) for a tiny fraction of the cost.

[virtualwhys]

Agreed, there's a price to pay for Scala's elegance (long compile times).

If Kotlin can deliver on the promise to compile _at least as fast_ as Java, it will find Java converts for sure.

> Kotlin gives you all of those features that would interest all but avid Haskellers.

Not so sure about that, Scala runs on the JVM, which is one of the reasons Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Big Companies have adopted the former and not the latter.

Will be interesting to see how things play out. For example, what will Kotlin provide in the way of a concurrency library like Scala's Akka? Are LINQ and F# style Type Providers possible in Kotlin given it's mandate for simplicity and compiler performance?

I suspect Java8 is going to be a thorn in Kotlin's side given that Java8 will likely already have been given a look at by Java world before Kotlin 1.0 comes on the scene.

[pron]

> Not so sure about that, Scala runs on the JVM, which is one of the reasons Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Big Companies have adopted the former and not the latter.

If you look at their code, they, like most Scala developers, hardly ever use features not found in Kotlin. None of them use the language for its Haskellesque powers.

> Agreed, there's a price to pay for Scala's elegance (long compile times).

I was referring to mental load and indescribable complexity that makes Haskell look like child play in comparison - not compilation time. This is the price Scala pays for power; I wouldn't in a million years call it elegant, but some people think it is.