Scala 2.9.0 RC1 released (scala-lang.org)

There isn't as much new features in this release compared to the 2.7.7 -> 2.8.0 upgrade, but this is still a notable release.

Not mentioned in the post but apparently included with this release it the new "Dynamic" trait, which enables runtime method dispatching. See http://squirrelsewer.blogspot.com/2011/02/scalas-upcoming-dy... for a better explanation and examples.

I see they've shaved a second off of startup time. The slow startup is a problem for me because I want to learn Scala by writing little utility scripts, instead of using Perl. I don't want replace Perl but it's more fun to learn something by using it to solve real problems.