Some remarks:

First, the thread and many like it seems too negatve to me. Scala is used
in a large and growing number of enterprises, some of them with more than
100 devs working with it. These people just get on with the job (and love
it for the most part); they don't find Scala's ``complexity'' too daunting.

Second, I believe we have come to realize that complexity and power are
pretty much aligned for Scala.
Take away the complexity and you take away the power. Here I mean power in
the sense: "Number of concepts that you can describe precisely using your
language". I want to get away from the common argument that all Turing
complete languages are equivalent in power anyway.

Third, if you look at other languages, there is always a set of "best
practices" developed that come with it and that are used as guidelines.
Certainly Java has a rich culture of best practices. And that cultures
changes over time, as developments in Java EE show.

Since Scala's enterprise use is still young, best practices have still a
some way to develop and stabilize.
This is your chance! If you put out some clean libraries with easy-to use
APIs you have a great chance to influence the future best practices for
Scala, as long as they are still in flux. I wish we'd concentrate more on
these aspects than wringing our hands.

Can best practices be influenced by tools, such as style checkers? Maybe.
It's certainly something we want to pursue. But it would be silly to
delegate responsibility for forming best practices to these tools only.

[Cross-posted to scala-user, because it relates to quite a few threads
there as well]

 -- Martin