I think that's well written and makes many good points that I agree with, but something that jumps out at me is this:
> I also programmed in Perl and after 2 years of doing it I would still have problems reading code from other people
> I've seen many superficial opinions floating on the web that a language like Scala is too complicated and then when you ask those people why, it turns out that in most cases we are talking about misconceptions and unjustified fear coming from a superficial understanding of a language
That's generally the same thing I see when talking to people about Perl. I don't know the level of knowledge you gained with Perl, so I don't know if it really applies the same, but from the outside, it does look the same.
I generally view this a a problem of language power AND complexity. Complex languages take longer to learn and be comfortable with, but if the complexity is because they provide more power, what you are really doing is front-loading work to make future work easier, which pays dividends in the end. I think this also fits your description of leverage quite well.
> I also programmed in Perl and after 2 years of doing it I would still have problems reading code from other people
> I've seen many superficial opinions floating on the web that a language like Scala is too complicated and then when you ask those people why, it turns out that in most cases we are talking about misconceptions and unjustified fear coming from a superficial understanding of a language
That's generally the same thing I see when talking to people about Perl. I don't know the level of knowledge you gained with Perl, so I don't know if it really applies the same, but from the outside, it does look the same.
I generally view this a a problem of language power AND complexity. Complex languages take longer to learn and be comfortable with, but if the complexity is because they provide more power, what you are really doing is front-loading work to make future work easier, which pays dividends in the end. I think this also fits your description of leverage quite well.