What is Scala, what did you do?

SBT is the preferred build and project tool for Scala. So I created a template/empty project that includes the Processing library as a starting point to write any Processing program in Scala. One of the cool things SBT does it automatically compile and run when the source code changes. This makes developing Processing programs in Scala nearly as good as using Processing's own editor/runner.

IDEA is the best IDE for writing Scala. You just need the free version of IDEA and the Scala plugin (which you can install from inside IDEA's preferences dialog).

I thought this was interesting (from the SPDE home page): " sketches will look similar to those in the p5 dialect of Java if written in an imperative style, while an embrace of immutability and other functional concepts". I have found that immutable objects are problematic because of the huge number of objects creations involved in typical Processing programs, which is hell on the GC. I've had to write some of my experiments using mutable data, and non-idiomatic Scala.