That doesn't do much to make it a great choice, though. In particular, Scala can be a fair bit trickier in terms of knowing your memory profile.

Though, I doubt it is much worse than Java these days.

Not true, the mix of functional and OO features make the language complex even without the libraries. Throw in implicits, higher kinds, pattern matching, a fairly good generic type system, support for all kinds of polymorphisms (subtyping, ad hoc, duck typing), etc... and you can see complexity emerge pretty quickly.

Implicits? Compared to Java, Scala is not a simple language. I'd say Scala's complexity is on the order of Haskell + Java syntax with additional glue on top of that.

Not to say this is bad, it just means you need greater discipline when writing software in Scala. A bit like C++ (yes, I went there! :-)).

I'd say this makes Scala slightly more complex than C++ and Ada. Java and Haskell are not in the same league when it comes to complexity (Java because it's simple, Haskell, because it's wickedly well designed so its complexity is completely tractable).

The great thing is that as soon as people mention C++, it's immediately clear that this person has not a single clue what he/she is talking about.