> I've never experienced null problems in Scala. There's theory and there's practice.
Yes, and I'm speaking in practice! If your language allows nulls, they will be used. I've experienced plenty of NPEs in Scala code, both from Java libraries and from misbehaving Scala code, to know this is real. Lucky you if you haven't experienced them! (As an aside: avoiding NPE is almost never a matter of simply "reading the docs". Many times there aren't docs at all, and even when there are, nulls are seldom documented).
> Being a "jack of all trades" means Scala has the superior module system
Your comparison with Haskell modules is fair. But that's just one aspect. Being a jack of all trades means Scala has poorer type inference, way worse type signatures, and generally it feels less clean than both a purer OOP language and a FP one. Scala does fine in all fronts, but not great. If you want to do FP, there are far better languages. I assume it's the same with OOP.
> SBT is amongst the best build tools ever available
If true, that's... unfortunate. SBT is uncomfortable and bizarre. Before you mention it: Maven looks likewise bizarre to me. These are tools to suffer with resignation, not to celebrate. Talking about Haskell, I'm trying to learn stack, which some say makes cabal more bearable. Are you familiar with it?
I agree IntelliJ is now an acceptable IDE for Scala. It's still ages from the comfort of using Eclipse with Java (at least what Eclipse used to be, not the unbearable beast it is now), and to be honest, IntelliJ only recently became usable. A couple of years ago (definitely less than 3 years), the IDE choked on Scala code and highlighted compilation errors left and right where there were none -- and I'm talking about vanilla Scala code, nothing advanced.
Yes, and I'm speaking in practice! If your language allows nulls, they will be used. I've experienced plenty of NPEs in Scala code, both from Java libraries and from misbehaving Scala code, to know this is real. Lucky you if you haven't experienced them! (As an aside: avoiding NPE is almost never a matter of simply "reading the docs". Many times there aren't docs at all, and even when there are, nulls are seldom documented).
> Being a "jack of all trades" means Scala has the superior module system
Your comparison with Haskell modules is fair. But that's just one aspect. Being a jack of all trades means Scala has poorer type inference, way worse type signatures, and generally it feels less clean than both a purer OOP language and a FP one. Scala does fine in all fronts, but not great. If you want to do FP, there are far better languages. I assume it's the same with OOP.
> SBT is amongst the best build tools ever available
If true, that's... unfortunate. SBT is uncomfortable and bizarre. Before you mention it: Maven looks likewise bizarre to me. These are tools to suffer with resignation, not to celebrate. Talking about Haskell, I'm trying to learn stack, which some say makes cabal more bearable. Are you familiar with it?
I agree IntelliJ is now an acceptable IDE for Scala. It's still ages from the comfort of using Eclipse with Java (at least what Eclipse used to be, not the unbearable beast it is now), and to be honest, IntelliJ only recently became usable. A couple of years ago (definitely less than 3 years), the IDE choked on Scala code and highlighted compilation errors left and right where there were none -- and I'm talking about vanilla Scala code, nothing advanced.