[rbanffy]

> It's a bit timid of them to start from C#

Microsoft is a timid company. Any company in their dominant position (they own the corporate desktop) will avoid making anything very disruptive unless they feel they are playing a losing game.

Also, corporate-level C# developers are cheap and abundant. Much like Java was designed to be C++ developer friendly (and C# itself was designed to be Java developer friendly), it makes sense to design a new language to be more amenable to a large number of developers, even if it implies sacrificing some power.