In Januari 2015 we started on a new project using Scala with a team which had hardly any Scala experience. In this talk I’d like to share insights and experiences during a 2-year journey of using Scala/Akka in a real project, how the team learned Scala and slowly found it’s way into functional programming. It will include some best practices, pitt falls and lessons learned in both using Scala and the interoperability with Java and Groovy. Some of the technologies we used are Akka, Spray, Finatra, Json4s, Neo4j Joost den Boer As an early Java adopter, Joost has 20 years of experience in building and designing Java applications at different companies. He likes to learn about new ’stuff’; Scala, NoSQL like Mongo, Cassandra and Neo4j, Hadoop, Microservices, Containers, Functional Programming, Akka. He want to know about it all. Having made his home 'IoT ready’ already 2 years ago, he is constantly looking for new ways to extend his home automation. After working at several companies, Joost is started working as a contractor in 2009 and has worked as such at companies like the Dutch National Bank, Bol.com, Marktplaats and currently at Philips Lighting. He is also organiser of both the Brabant-Scala and the '073 Developers BeerChat’ meetup groups. [LLO-3403]