I came across this interesting video called "meet the design team" for C# 4.0. After the successful launch of C# 3.0 the design team is already on its way to build the next generation of the language and set the agenda for what is required of it. From the discussion the salient points I can gather are:

Power of dynamic: You know the thing about languages like javascript and VB that you don't have to define everything before hand, like in statically typed languages like C# and its predecessors and you program and define as you go along. Well, the that is the power of dynamic languages. They don't enforce a whole lot of structure on you when writing your programs because they don't care about the program being perfectly typed and thoroughly structured, rather their focus is on the program flow so that you can achieve what you plan to do in the least amount of time. Simple.

Power of functional: If you have worked with any "declarative" language and chances are that you have, then you would know what power functional languages give you. Every developer these days has worked with SQL which is a declarative language and and C# programmers have been exposed to the new LINQ model which is also pretty declarative. The thing about declarative is that instead of writing the program as a series of steps, like a flowchart, where you convert your intent into a well defined structure, you just go ahead and express your intent and say be and it is. Like for example when writing and SQL statement you don't specify "how" it will execute and use indexes and generate temporary tables or loop through a table for every matching row, you just say it should do all that and it does.

Power of concurrency: A point that Anders makes towards the end of the session referring to the Moore's Law, which states that computing power will double every eighteen months, is that the increase of power has taken a shift from more megahertz to more processors because we have kind of reached a limit for how small and fast can we make a processor. So, we are just putting in more of them to meet the demand. Now to effectively adapt to this new trend the languages must have some constructs that allow the programmer to express his "intent" regarding concurrency.

Watch and enjoy.

C# 4.0: Meet the Design Team