Funnily enough, I was reading a Scala program the other day and I noted how much it looked like a high-level dynamic Java programming. I think there was maybe 8 lines of typical functional programming code and the rest just looked like imperative code. It seems a waste to use Scala that way to me, but maybe I'm missing something?
Even if you're writing Java-like code you get a lighter syntax, fewer awkward special cases (primitives and arrays aren't as special, == does the right thing by default, try doesn't need braces and nor do function blocks, if is an expression), and some very useful code-saving constructs (case classes, pattern matching). It's not using Scala's full potential but it's still a good language for that space.
