It struck me the other day that I would love a "Scala: The Good Parts". Wouldn't it be great if there was a small, powerful kernel in there, somewhere, and someone explained it...
Even if there were such a book, you'd have to deal with other people's code that used the "Bad Parts" of Scala. I dread deciphering clever Scala one-liners.
While definitely not small, the stairway book, "Programming in Scala" by Odersky, mentioned in the article, is an excellent tutorial style book. The second edition was just released in January.
