Scala is the programming language designed by Martin Odersky and first released publicly in 2004.
The name Scala refers to its ability to scale from small scripts to large applications. Odersky designed it at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and the language was released as an open-source project in 2004.
Scala combines object-oriented and functional programming features. It supports classes and objects while also offering immutable collections, higher-order functions, pattern matching, and type inference.
Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine and can interoperate with Java libraries. That relationship sometimes causes confusion with Kotlin, another JVM language, but Scala and Kotlin have different designers, syntax, type systems, and historical development paths.