This talk will explore two areas where minor improvements could have a huge impact on Scala’s usability.

The first relates to the extensibility of its standard library. Indeed, extending it with custom data structures is surprisingly challenging, making it difficult to inherit collection algorithms, thus compelling users to resort to expensive wrappers or reinvent the wheel. Interestingly, other languages have appropriated Scala’s type classes to address this issue. Is there a reason Scala cannot do the same?

The second relates to control-flow. While Scala still enjoys the most expressive form of pattern matching, Swift and Rust have brought a number of improvements that enhance the convenience of recurring idioms. Surely, Scala can incorporate these sugars into its powerful system.