Thread: What is your favorite programming language, and why?

T-I seems to be a pretty diverse community--some of you here must be programmers, or even amateur hobbyists. If you fall into one of these categories, here's some questions for you!

1. What is your favorite programming language?
2. What do you like about it?
3. What are some flaws with it that you'd like to see adressed?

Here's my set of answers:

1. C#
2. It's strongly and statically typed, with a great expressive quality, and modern language features like closures, generics, automatic memory management, interfaces, extension methods, etc. The syntax and libraries enable a blend of traditional object-oriented and functional programming. It's also got an excellent supporting platform in the .NET base libraries and the JIT compiler, which makes C# fit for everything from line-of-business applications to code that needs to perform well and be verifiable and safe. LINQ is great for querying anything from object lists to XML to databases, and there's a wealth of quality, open-source third-party libraries that enable all sorts of best practice scenarios (AOP, ORMs, IoC/DI containers, etc.).
3. The type inference could be better--it'd be nice to not have to specify the types as often, much like Haskell with its Hindley-Milner type infernece, or Standard ML. On the whole, better higher-order facilities would be a welcome addition to the language. Thankfully, F# alleviates some of these problems, providing a Standard ML-like language on the .NET platform.