I'm learning Scala as a first JVM language, and it is definitely great to be able to access so many Java libraries so seamlessly (Mina, Apache commons, Hadoop, ...), all the Scala syntax/type inference goodness just works and in some cases make the libraries significantly nicer to use in Scala than in Java (IMO).
Comments
By leveraging the JVM, they were able to re-use existing compiled Java classes alongside the Scala classes.
Slide 25 hints at this, but I seem to recall Alex saying they used the Java-based Apache HttpClient in their test cases.
I'm learning Scala as a first JVM language, and it is definitely great to be able to access so many Java libraries so seamlessly (Mina, Apache commons, Hadoop, ...), all the Scala syntax/type inference goodness just works and in some cases make the libraries significantly nicer to use in Scala than in Java (IMO).