True, but: 1. There are a ton of long-running/cron-style tasks where JVM startup overhead just isn't relevant (and Scala's type safety, access to Java libraries

True, but: 1. There are a ton of long-running/cron-style tasks where JVM startup overhead just isn't relevant (and Scala's type safety, access to Java libraries and logging tools rinse Bash), and: 2. If you are using Scala scripting in "live operator" mode, here's a good SO answer on how to speed that up: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4237863/improving-scala-script-startup-time-client-mode http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4237863/improving-scala-s...