Yesterday I saw the announcement from the Ceylon team that the first milestone release had been made publicly available. And from what I can see, it looks intersting.
From looking at the information on Ceylon, its purpose seems largely in line with the purpose of Scala...
Ceylon is deeply influenced by Java. You see, we're fans of Java, but we know its limitations inside out. Ceylon keeps the best bits of Java but improves things that in our experience are annoying, tedious, frustrating, difficult to understand, or bugprone.
So, in a nutsheel, Ceylon and Scala seem to be saying (in my interpretation) We Like Java, but there are annoyances, so we want to build on top of Java to make life better.
But want I want to know is, why create Yet-Another-Java-Killer, as some have billed Ceylon, when Scala already exists? What sets Ceylon apart, or above Scala?
Note: Please no "I like X over Y", I am looking for an objective view of what Ceylon offers the development community.
The team behind Ceylon claims Scala is to difficult/complex/complicated and tried to create something that is simpler.
The echo that comes back from the Scala community is that Scala isn't difficult, and that Ceylon misses a lot of the important power of Scala.
It's hard to even think about this without getting into a flame war.