This guy gave an excellent interview on Software Engineering radio a few weeks ago. <a href="http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2009-07/episode-140-newspeak-and-pluggable-types-gilad-bracha" rel="nofollow">http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2009-07/episode-140-newspeak...</a>
Gilad Bracha (from my worm's-eye view) is doing some of the most interesting work in languages today.<p>He's reworking the Smalltalk language, essentially adding capabilities (no access to anything you're not explicitly granted), and doing mind-blowing UI work (with other people), the Hopscotch framework.<p>See <a href="http://langnetsymposium.com/2009/talks/08-GiladBracha-Hopscotch.html" rel="nofollow">http://langnetsymposium.com/2009/talks/08-GiladBracha-Hopsco...</a> .