I think Scala especially excels at prototyping. I use it from quick and dirty scripts and ad-hoc data-processing (the stuff you would usually use Perl/bash/...

I think Scala especially excels at prototyping. I use it from quick and dirty scripts and ad-hoc data-processing (the stuff you would usually use Perl/bash/...) over exploratory programming, database work (SQL) and architecture sketches (GUI tools) to full-blown (web) applications (JavaEE, Python, Ruby, ...) and browser scripting (usually JavaScript). I miss none of the "standard" technologies.