> You also cannot write about learning resource, without mentioning "Programming in Scala" by Odersky, a wonderful book also meant for human beings. Its only problem is that it's a tome of information and you may not have the patience for that, but it's not a hard to digest book so if you've got the time and patience, then this is THE book you should read: http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala_2ed
+1
The book is huge, but that's more to do with the fact that Scala is one kitchen sink of a language than the writing.
The book is huge because it goes to great length at explaining good design practices, the rationale of features in the language and how they are implemented under the hood, not mentioning functional programming and OOP concepts ... many of the exercises from SICP also appear in this book.
It's a complete reference to the language and I've never seen a reference that isn't huge.
Scala is not a kitchen sink. The number of features included is quite small and for the most parts orthogonal, but because those features are very powerful, their combination is a little overwhelming for beginners. This happens in every language that's not meant for assembly lines. Even for Java, learning is not complete without reading another book on patterns and another one on effective usage of it.
They also spend time on external libraries, such as Akka. Part of the appeal of Scala is that its design for extensibility can make libraries feel like part of the language and Akka is one of the best examples of this (and indeed was designed with input from Odersky as a replacement for native Scala actors).
It really is a great book. I never thought I would read this type of technical book on a Kindle but it reads really easily and I have read far more of it than I would on paper (even though paper is better for a reference book, I don't want to read a big heavy book in bed but I really do with the Kindle).
Totally forgot to mention the standard library, which is getting quite big. Just yesterday I read the chapter on parser combinators. Good book :)
Although I haven't encountered mentions of Akka in Programming in Scala by Odersky. There is a chapter on Actors but I skipped it and went straight to http://akka.io
Btw, for technical books I'm using an iPad, as you can read PDFs with colors on it and it's easier to go back and forth between pages and zoom-in, zoom-out, being closer to the way I normally read technical books. I then put PDFs I buy in Google Drive and open them in Acrobat Reader, also available on iPads.
So don't buy eBooks from Amazon, prefer the original publisher instead, to also get a DRM-free PDF in addition to the Kindle format (you never know when you'll use it).
Lua's design philosophy is to keep it simple, which works well for their user base and domain of use (lots of embedding in games as a scripting language). Scala is not meant to be a simple scripting language, its more like a power language. Both are very good languages.
+1
The book is huge, but that's more to do with the fact that Scala is one kitchen sink of a language than the writing.