Getting started with Scala on macOS in 2025
Scala is a functional programming language that I’ve come across in the past, but it never stuck in my tool belt. One of my clients has asked me to help them with a billing project, and as this is a Scala shop, I figured it would make sense to get a head start and setup my workstation to be ready to work with Scala again.
The best way to get started with Scala is by using Coursier; an application and artifact manager for Scala. The official docs for both Scala and Coursier seem to provide incorrectsuboptimal information for installation. Both sources recommend installing coursier/formulas/coursier using brew, however that formula seems to install an Intel binary, which obviously doesn’t run on Apple silicon. Instead, the following workaround appears to work quite well:
Once you have coursier installed and setup, you should have a fully functional Scala build environment. Here’s the usual sanity check:
def hello() = println("Hello, World!")
Which you can run with scala run hello.scala. The output should look something like:
Compiling project (Scala 3.6.4, JVM (23))
Compiled project (Scala 3.6.4, JVM (23))
Hello, World!
Fantastic. Now what’s left to do is to enable code completion for Scala in nvim. :LazyExtras should offer scala as a suggested language if you’re editing the hello.scala file above, after which a :MetalsInstall should install everything needed to get up and running.
Once Metals is installed, you should be able to see proper code completion. Sadly, type hints in the form of inlays doesn’t seem to be supported. This is an extremely useful feature that I’ve come to absolute love when writing Rust, and I don’t understand that it’s not a priority for most LSPs. I find it almost universally useful, regardless of the language.