As a kid, I loved the Hardy Boys mysteries, they always had interesting mysteries and plots that were just simple enough that you could figure them out at just the right time. Sometimes, programming is like a mystery, something happens unexpectedly, you hunt down clues, solve the mystery, and find that it leads to deeper mysteries.
A while ago, I started exploring Scala and wrote a post called Head Smacking in Scala on Positively Glorious! (Republished here for convenience). Yesterday I found another head smacking problem that taught me a few …