Scala vs Light Table

The immutable values make it perfect for working with concurrency

Scala supports both Functional and Object Oriented styles of programming. Beginners can learn both paradigms without having to learn a new language, and experts can switch between the two according to what best suits their needs at the time.

Scala offers type inference, which, while giving the same safety as Java's type system, allows programmers to focus on the code itself, rather than on updating type annotations.

Aside from Java itself, Scala is by far the most popular of the many JVM languages. If you're developing for Android, or a similar JVM-only platform, or otherwise need out-of-the-box cross-platform compatibility, but the performance of a compiled language, Scala is the way to go.

On coursera you can find great introduction to Scala by Martin Odersky.

With LT's inline evaluation, you don't have to re-compile your whole source file. Each time you want to see an output, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the line you'd like to evaluate and press ctrl+enter; LT will evaluate that line of code for you.

The "Watches" feature lets you see your code running live as you type it. This means that you can debug your code live while writing it, which leads to considerably less programming errors.

LT has a plugin manager built directly inside of it. This plugin manager connects to LT's own registry of plugins, so whenever you want assistance while writing your HTML, JS, or even Python, just open up the plugin manager, search for it, and click the little install button beside it's name. Your plugin will then be installed.