Scala is a great language, but the requirement that I ship Scala's libraries if I want to do thinks the Scala way is a nonstarter for the use cases I have. Yes, you can Proguard a lot of that away, but if I use Scala's collections or other libraries, I'm still stuck adding a runtime lib.
As far as the others go...I don't disagree. Perfect integration with Java is perhaps a bit debateable, since you can't overload constructors, can't define real static methods Java can see, and so on. But those are minor items.
I don't intend Mirah to be a Scala-killer either. Scala is more of a platform now than just a language, and if you're on that platform, you have my blessing. If, however, you just want something to replace javac everywhere you use Java today, I believe Mirah is a better fit.
You are right. It really depends on use cases. In many scenarios, a 5mb lib is just another dep that build tools such as sbt will handle for you. In many others, 5mb overhead to a 500kb mobile app is obviously overkill.
My use case is fine with Scala: no deployment issue, no Java legacy other than using a few libs, and everything else is fresh in Scala. So far I'm very happy with the choice. FP makes things really compact.
I like Mirah for the fact that it can generate Java source code (vs. JVM bytecode). I would imagine there are many cases Java compatibility down to the source code level would be desired.
As far as the others go...I don't disagree. Perfect integration with Java is perhaps a bit debateable, since you can't overload constructors, can't define real static methods Java can see, and so on. But those are minor items.
I don't intend Mirah to be a Scala-killer either. Scala is more of a platform now than just a language, and if you're on that platform, you have my blessing. If, however, you just want something to replace javac everywhere you use Java today, I believe Mirah is a better fit.