Re:Design Patterns (Score 1)

Interesting comment. Check out the new extensions to the Haskell type system, though - some of these are pretty powerful. The disadvantage is that it takes quite a lot of type systems background to understand and program with these type systems. I do not want to start the typical comp.lang.functional static vs dynamic type checking, but I it's worth keeping in mind the benfits of both.
Cayenne is also a in interesting language to look at.
Coming back to design patterns, though - the opinion that design patterns are nasty hacks is worth spreading - this will yeild better languages, tools, more productivity and domain specific langauges... After all, we don't want to program *everyithing* in C. (ooh, controversial here on /.) Look forward to your reply, aas23