The Java world's host of useful libraries inspires many people to write their code in Java. This is not strictly necessary.

Scala is a programming language that gives you easy access to Java libraries without having to write in Java. Since Scala does not have to be source-compatible with Java -- only bytecode-compatible -- it is free to offer a number of simplifications and, we think, improvements over Java.

Among these are: a unified object model, state of the art mixins (including "interfaces with code"), closures, class-wide visible constructor parameters, and pattern matching.

In addition, the group follows the "growing a language" approach and thus includes features that should allow the larger Scala community to enhance the language themselves.