Honestly, I'm most excited about the seemingly mundane parts of this update: named and default args, and package objects. The big reason that Scala appeals to me more than Haskell or ML for building non-trivial systems is the pragmatic way it approaches real-world program construction.<p>I think that adopting the best features of existing OO languages like Python (named/default args, first-class packages) and Ruby (flexible syntax for pseudo-DSLs, pervasive use of lambdas/blocks in stdlib for iteration and control) while running atop the JVM is a great strategy.