I guess one thing I left out in my post that I should have added was: it's easy for people to learn. I bet just about anyone with much programming experience c

I guess one thing I left out in my post that I should have added was: it's easy for people to learn. I bet just about anyone with much programming experience can spend 5 minutes looking at C# and understand most of the language. It's familiar enough for anyone from a C/C++/Java/JavaScript/PHP background that it's not intimidating, even at first blush. I bet C# is more comfy for a lot of Ruby and Python folks, too. I really, really, really like F#. The main problem with F# isn't a language or syntax problem (in fact, it's not a problem at all). F# (or other functional-first languages) isn't just different syntax-wise, it's different thinking-wise. A "good" F# program is generally written in a fundamentally different way than a "good" C# program. This is the declarative vs. imperative split. Sometimes it's really hard to convince people to change the way they think about how to go about solving a problem.