Should I Learn Scala or Python?

Should I learn Scala or Python?

Python is better for about 95% of all your applications.

Scala can be used for a lot of applications.

Python is good for web development, server apps and client applications. Scala has a narrow niche where it is good, but flexible programming languages are great.

I've heard Python is better for beginners.

It has more educational resources, more documentation, bigger libraries, better tools -- bigger and better, kind of like Texas.

That requires too much suspension of belief. Or is it suspending your disbelief?

Let's look at the job market. Python jobs outnumber Scala jobs twenty to one.

Scala is a better tool when writing concurrent applications and large projects.

Companies clearly don't think that or there would be more demand for their programmers. And unlike C and JavaScript, that work hasn't been outsourced overseas because of sheer demand.

Scala has a lot of influence over other languages.

A lot of things have a lot of influence over other things; if you want to have influence, join the IEEE or ANSI standards committee instead of trying to learn an obscure language.

Scala is more reliable, and it is more likely to run properly if it can compile.

Sun Microsystems were once joked as being the cars that got 200 miles per gallon and were utterly comfortable but ran on 5% of the roads, while Microsoft was a car whose engine stalled every five minutes.

What does that have to do with programming languages?

Scala may work better for a narrow niche like concurrent applications running on supercomputers, but it isn't robust enough for the real world.

I don't want to be a snake in the grass, but you don't think I should learn the better programming language.

Employers are voting with their dollars, and that is a better measure than a bunch of polled programmers.

[Meiroa]

Scala can potentially replace all Java source code because it runs within the JVM. Which means, it could be used wherever Java is used. And Java is way more used than the Snake. It has a powerful type inference and huge amount of functions out-the-box. Plus you won't need to deal with the annoying decision to go for  python 2 or python 3. 

[jaehyeonkim]

At least for those who are interested in data science, Scala shouldn't be looked over.

[jerryjerry]

For those looking to get into big data analytics: R + Scala is the best option. R is the best data analysis + data visualization tool. Scala is the best big data processing tool. Python isn't the best at either, but is ok to really good at either.