This was the closest I could find to an applicable session at 11:00 this morning. I'm glad I went because it was very interesting. The presenter has been on the CLR team at Microsoft since it started, but moved to IronPython/DLR (a common dynamic language runtime) because he saw the it as the future of programming -- where we shouldn't be so concerned about all the static code, compiling, debugging, etc. Instead we should be concerned about getting things done in an expressive and productive fashion, and this is what these technologies are all about.

So if he's right, we should all start taking a more serious look at these technologies at some point in the near future... It makes a lot of sense, actually. Computers are getting faster, and middle layers (like .Net actually) don't make that much of a difference anymore. Back in the day we avoided any middle layer abstractions because they just added bulk (e.g. writing to the Windows API). Now we welcome them because they allow us to get the job done faster...