This guy gave an excellent interview on Software Engineering radio a few weeks ago. http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2009-07/episode-140-newspeak...

Gilad Bracha (from my worm's-eye view) is doing some of the most interesting work in languages today.

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.

See http://langnetsymposium.com/2009/talks/08-GiladBracha-Hopsco... .

The irony? No doubleplus operator ("++").