Integrating Scala with Erlang -- Initial steps

So, I've started a parallel implementation of jinterface 1.5 in Scala, the idea being

1. To teach myself Scala by doing
2. To experiment with the actor-based concurrency as a counterparty to the Erlang model
3. To experiment with Scala as a dual VM technology

So far, just the term-representation classes, and the start of the Input/Decode and Output/Encode part; and some unit tests, only for Atom so far.

I am impressed at how much I've been able to do without bringing in platform types that I will need to abstract out. What was memory-based I/O in Java or C# becomes Seq[Byte] or Queue[Byte] as appropriate and basing all exceptions off the shared name Exception root class gets rid of any dependence on concrete subclasses. It's only BigInt that is a known problem so far, where I'll need to factor out a platform abstraction later. Of course abstracting ZLib support is a task lurking in the near future, as well.

The first noticeable difference from trying to tidy the C#2 port of an older Java version is that the functional style and rich library support make a lot of previously long-winded support methods significantly more expressive. Contrast the Erlang list (of integer values) to String

public System.String StringValue
        {
            get
            {
                char[] body = new char[Arity];
                ReadOnlyCollection<IObject> e = Elements;
                for (int i = 0; i < Arity; ++i)
                {
                    Integer v = e[i] as Integer;
                    if (null == v) body[i] = '?';
                    else
                    {
                        System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(v != null && v.Value != null);
                        char? c = v.Value.ToChar();
                        if (null == c) c = '?';
                        body[i] = (char)c;
                    }
                }
                return new string(body);
            }
        }
// and elsewhere
        public char? ToChar()
        {
            try
            {
                return (char)System.UInt16.Parse(this.ToString(), System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Integer, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
            }
            catch (OverflowException)
            {
                return null;
            }
        }

with

def AsString =
  {
    (Elements map List.AsChar).mkString
  }
// and elsewhere
  def AsChar(obj : IObject) =
    obj match
    {
      case c : Integer if c.Value < (Integer.Zero + Char.MinValue.toInt) => '?'
      case c : Integer if c.Value >= (Integer.Zero + Char.MaxValue.toInt) => '?'
      case c : Integer => c.Value.intValue.toChar
      case _ => '?'
    }

Yes, using C#3's functional extensions, that too could be simplified; this is really the Java equivalent of doing that.

Code drop on the MediaFire page.