Python and Ruby code would likely win more beauty contest (which is actually kind of important to me) but, with the advent of C# 3 and 4, I don't think that there is much difference in expressive power. Not having a REPL still sucks though.
LinqPad[1] seems like a decent alternative to having a REPL. It can run anything from a C# expression to a full program. This is in addition to it's better-advertised use in debugging LINQ queries.
You get a poor man's REPL with the Immediate Window in the debugger. You can't create classes (or statements in general). but you can evaluate expressions.
The compiler rewrite that's meant to enable REPL (along with some cool metaprogramming features, I hope) isn't targeted at 5.0, but a still later release. Though you can get a C# REPL in Mono today.
Really? That sucks. (The post 5.0 thing sucks, not Mono). With REPL and Async (and the other metaprogramming stuff) I was thinking 5.0 was going to be their biggest release yet.
