Groovy

Years ago, I wrote cross-platform scripts(mostly database and automation stuff) using perl... now I'm using Groovy :-)
It has closure-support, you can reuse all your existing java libraries, and GSQL is a real-time saver.
Performance isn't always stellar, but they're working on it

This language is nothing short of awesome. I initially came across it when looking for an alternative to Ruby, and discovered a language which had all the strengths of Ruby, none of the short-comings, and added a whole lot of new features.

I expect Groovy and Grails to become as big (if not bigger) than Ruby on Rails.

Because of it's close link with Java, it opens massive possibilities for extending the language and providing high-speed libraries - something which is very difficult to do in Ruby (with the possible exception of JRuby).

One of the greatest possibilities of Groovy is that IDE's such as NetBeans allows you to mix Groovy and Java source in a single project, which means you can mix-and-match agile development through Groovy and high-performance components through Java.

Definitely a A++ project!

interesting realization