I challenge the fact that Rust and Kotlin are improving faster than Scala. Scala is not only more stable, but is under active development and there are lots of discussions to improve the language over time (check our SIP meetings).
Kotlin doesn't even get closer to what Scala is, and Rust is for those folks with the mentality that memory management is something worth keeping track of.
They're not charging for debugger access. CLion is the only IDE where they have tie ins to GDB etc. so the Native plugin is only for that, but most Kotlin users are on the JVM, where the IDEA Community Edition is not only free, but open-source.
Because I was trying to explain that the only reason Kotlin/Native is tied to (paid) CLion is because that's the only IDE where JetBrains have native GDB/LLDB integration, not that they charge for a debugger, which is demonstrated by the fact that where there would be the most potential customers, (JVM Kotlin users), they don't charge anything.
The only reason they charge here, is because Clion is primarily a C/C++ IDE, (which explains why they have the GDB integration there) and they want to sell that, (the C/C++ IDE), but given the debugging integration, it's also the best IDE to integrate with Kotlin/Native, (which is free, but the C++ IDE is not), where they have a free offering, (Intellij CE on the JVM), they charge nothing even for the debugging GUI for Kotlin.
This is further demonstrated by the fact that their Rust plugin doesn't require CLIon for its IDE features, (even open-source IDEA will do), only if you ALSO want the debugging GUI, you have to go with CLion, a paid C++ IDE.
In other words, I am trying to get this idea across that:
1. The Kotlin/Native plugin is free.
2. The only IDE Jetbrains have with GDB integration is CLion.
3. CLion is a paid IDE for C/C++, not Kotlin.
4, Kotlin/Native plugin can only work with CLion for technical reasons, see 2.
5. Because CLion is paid and Kotlin/Native plugin work only with CLion, it happens to come out to you having to pay for CLion to get the Kotlin/Native plugin working.
6. That does not mean that Kotlin/Native or the Kotlin/Native plugin themselves are paid products, they're not, nor are Jetbrains charging for access to the debugger itself.
They are charging for the experience of using a GUI based debugger.
I don't remember when it was the last time I was forced to use a command line debugger even for C and C++, typing s, n, l, p all the time. Maybe around 2000 or so.
Kotlin doesn't even get closer to what Scala is, and Rust is for those folks with the mentality that memory management is something worth keeping track of.