Thanks much for the introductory steps to scala. I prefer diving into a language after scanning some theory.

Curious about a simple action thought, with scala/lift is there a simple way to retrieve an rss feed (one or two lines)?

I like Scala. It is an attempt to be more productive in the tradition of Ruby and Rails.
Some people think that Scala might allow difficult to read code on large projects with multiple people.
For that reason I have been thinking about how to reduce such problems. Here are two ideas:

1. Have a strict mode for the compiler which would force programmers into certain behaviors. ActionScript via FlexBuilder has a strict mode and I love it. With Scala an example of something to enforce in Strict mode would be a requirement that the programmer specify return types on methods/functions.

2. Another suggestion is to have an optional explicit interface declaration for methods/functions. In Java we tag a class as implementing an interface with the implements keyword. I am suggesting having a similar implements keyword for methods. So a function that takes another function as an argument could specify an expected function interface instead of a function signature. The purpose would be to make it easier for a programmer looking at code (that he/she did not write on a very large project where the original author is gone) better be able to track which functions could be passed to a given function and which could not. This reduces the set of possible code paths to consider and thus increases understanding

Thanks for considering this.

Great intro article that nicely steps through the various aspects of Scala !! Looking forward for more such articles.