The Gist

This isn’t covered by the tour.

My Interpretation

Type Specialization is a feature that allows the Scala compiler to create type-specific versions of classes that take type parameters. For example, if you have a collection of type Collection[T], and you specialize T, the compiler will create not just one class, but one for each primitive type as well as for the object type.

This is entirely transparent to the programmer, and essentially is useful for optimizing code that is being slowed down by autoboxing.

For a great overview, watch this talk] from ScalaDays 2010

My Thoughts on This Feature

TBD