1. I went to the Day of .NET, an all-day "geekfest", a sea of polos and khakis; and there, I made the final decision of what language I would learn next: Python. Well, specifically, IronPython. I guess a normal Python isn't scary enough, so we'll make it out of metal. (Presenter's website; presenter's slides; presenter's twitter)

The really, really cool thing about IronPython is the ease in which I can pull in other CLR languages; namely, C#. This will supposedly get better when Visual Studio 2010 comes out and the DLR is revamped and IronPython support grows. What this will allow me to do is build all of my base classes, and my data layer, which I'm more comfortable with, and use Python for all the fun stuff- services, and display. I've been considering writing my next game in Python anyway, influenced by Eve Online's incredible sucess using the language, so this fits in perfectly with my prior knowledge.

I'm pretty excited. I've never heard a negative thing about Python; everyone I've ever heard who uses it loves it.