Scala programming language

I took a look at Scala last year and set it aside, but this weekend I was looking at the Computer Language Benchmarks Game and noticed just how fast Scala is because it compiles efficiently to the JVM (I dream of JRuby approaching this speed but this will not happen because Ruby is not a staticly typed language and has other nice language features that are harder to optimize)

I am very happy now doing most of my work in Ruby (and/or JRuby) but I am keeping Scala in mind for possible future projects where Ruby is too slow. I find the syntax and language features pleasing and the Scala interactive REPL shell is nice. There is some initial NetBeans 6 and TextMate Scala support, but still works in progress.