My point being, Scala is a powerful and expressive language in which you can write something like a basic DSL. I personally think this is great, but a lot of Java secs will take one look at that level of flexibility and faint when trying to imagine a group of 10 developers of wildly varying ability and experience trying to manage a large code base with a language like this. Really, I've tried to introduce Scala in Java teams before, and was surprised at the pushback over just the concept of a different language running on the JVM. Groovy is apparently an exception, but I have not seen it used as the primary language over Java.

Yes, but you picked an example which is extremely easy to understand, on multiple levels. The Basic DSL is trivial. The Scala implementation is short and simple (don't trust me, take a look, assuming you're passingly familiar with Scala!).

Is your argument against DSLs in general? You don't need to write them at all if you don't want to. In fact, most Scala devs don't write DSLs.

So is your argument "the Java devs I worked with were afraid of languages with unfamiliar syntaxes"? Um. It's hard to argue with that. I don't know what to say, other than "some of the Java devs I currently work with embrace and love Scala, and others don't". Maybe change jobs and go work with more open-minded people?