I'm in the process of converting a middle-sized PHP codebase completely over to Scala. It is not uncommon for me to see functions that run between 15 and 30 lines shrink to 3 or 4 line functions thanks to the Collections API. On top of that its performance is something you'll never see in PHP or Python. I love Python for its readability and wonderful syntax, but Scala is starting to have an even greater pull on me for its built in concision and the ability to use the entire Java ecosystem without submitting to java's imperative style.