I'm looking for a meaningful task to learn Scala (something which is usable at the end and not only programming exercise), and I also have to make a forum, and I don't want to learn PHP... so I'm thinking about implementing an open source forum in Scala.
But does this make sense? Forums don't have high performance or scalability requirements... and also Java Hosting is more expensive, so even if my forum software is free, most people will not use it.
Am I missing use cases where forum written in Scala/Java makes sense, and is preferable over a PHP (or similar) forum?
I found for example this:
http://java-source.net/open-source/forum-software
But it seems to be abandoned, like stated here:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/497053/Ranch-Office/forum-has-been-built-JForum
So probably I'm correct that easy & cheap & slow is far more suitable for a forum = PHP?