I've started learning Scala and Lift together today. I've briefly looked at it prior to today but I haven't really dug in until today. My first major hurdle is Eclipse. I've had numerous issues getting Scala IDE and Lift working with Maven and essentially i've given up. I switched to IntelliJ IDEA and it's been great.

Conceptually it's a big leap to move to a functional programming language. Yeah, it's an OO / FP blend and you can move slowly over to FP but I feel that I'd rather make the plunge instead of just sticking my toe in. I'm working on a proof of concept that could really benefit from some Ajaxy portlets (not really portlets, but similar) which is the reason I'm trying Lift. The demonstrations of their Comet capabilities and the simple Ajax code is fairly compelling.

I love Python/Django and i've suffered with Java for many years, so part of me just wants to try something new. But instead of switching to OCaml or Haskell I figured i could gain the benefits of the FP language and the strong ajax support as well as reuse many of my java skills that i already have.

Anyhow, this is really just a kick off. I'll try to post when I come across something compelling or notable.