Thank you very much for taking the time to try to introduce Python programmers to Scala. I personally feel that the static type checking of Scala could help improve a lot of code currently written in scripting languages like Python.

Antoine already pointed out some issues. I will note that the '=' is actually required on your function because you have a return type. It was possible to leave out the = for the "procedure syntax", but that meant the method returned Unit. Your function specifies that it returns an Int, so the = is required.

One thing that Python programmers might find interesting about the soon to be released Scala 3 is that it has significant whitespace. So you can write code that looks very much like Python in many ways, but which has the benefits of static type checking.