This is my attempt to give Scala newcomers a quick-and-easy rundown to the prerequisite steps they need to a) try Scala, and b) get a standard project up and running on their machine.  I'm not going to talk about the language at all; there are plenty of better resources a google search away.  This is just focused on the prerequisite tooling and machine setup.  I will not be assuming you have any background in JVM languages.  So if you're coming from Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Haskell, or anywhere…  I hope to present the information you need without assuming anything.
Disclaimer  It has been over a decade since I was new to Scala, and when I was new to Scala, I was coming from a Java and Ruby background.  This has probably caused me to unknowingly make some assumptions.  Please feel free to call me out in comments/tweets!
One assumption I'm knowingly making is that you're on a Unix-like platform.  Sorry, Windows users.