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There are 172 comments until now but Scala was mentioned only 3 times while it has, I think, all the features that are said to be needed for a functional programming language. Then what's wrong with Scala?

I'd like Scala to be more successful although I'm using Java and a bit of Kotlin now.

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Scala has a lot of interesting concepts in it for sure! The problem is that the JVM is a deal-breaker, either because of its complexity or because of the associated licensing risk. Clojure has the same problem, for what it's worth.

I think intrinsic to that deal-breaker is the underlying problem. Memory management in a parallel environment is a tough nut to crack. Leaning on the JVM punts on the issue.

There's no reason JavaScript couldn't transparently implement parallel map/filter/etc. Other than the fact it is really hard to do. On the other hand a lot of the things JavaScript engines do today are also really hard, so maybe one day it'll happen.

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